Best Values in New Kitchen Cabinets

1. Keep Your Whole House in Mind

The kitchen may be your favorite room, but it is still only one of many rooms in the house. Spending a load on kitchen cabinets and appliances without matching that extravagance on other rooms creates an imbalanced house. As a general rule of thumb, don't spend more than 15 percent of the value of your home on a kitchen remodel, and if you are planning to sell in the near future, keep that figure at 5 to 10 percent. The more you go over those figures, the less of the investment you will recover when you sell.

2. Think Renewal Rather than Replacement

Old cabinets can look like new with a coat of paint or when refaced. If your primary problem with the cabinets is that they are dirty or the wrong color, but they still function well, you will save a bunch of money recovering the surface rather than replacing the whole room full of cabinets. Painting is a simple enough job for do-it-yourselfers, but you might want to find a competent professional to reface the cabinets.

Another low-cost option is to replace the doors and drawer fronts while keeping the cabinet boxes in place. Replacing the hardware is another way to make old cabinets look new again, especially when done in conjunction with painting or refacing.

3. Consider Open Shelving

Open shelves are convenient (no doors to open), inexpensive (fewer parts and easy installation) and, as luck would have it, a popular option in kitchen design these days. There is something odd about the idea of spending good money on kitchenware and then hiding it all behind closed doors. Open shelves give you the chance to show off your pots and pans, cutlery and plates while also allowing you to find and grab what you need quickly.

Open shelves also make a kitchen feel bigger and more open. Combine open shelves for wall storage with traditional base cabinets, or mix open shelves and cabinets on the wall. This is one of those cost-cutting choices that just happens to look like a creative design decision.

4. Do Some Work Yourself

An estimate for new kitchen cabinets from a contractor will likely contain prices for a number of chores you could do yourself. Consider volunteering to remove and dispose of the old cabinets yourself (you might be able to sell them). You can also save a lot of money by installing the cabinets yourself or by buying paint-grade cabinets and doing the painting yourself.

5. Cover the Same Spots

If all of your new cabinets cover all of the wall and floor spaces that your old cabinets did, you won't have to worry about additional expenses going to finishing the walls and floor.

6. Change the Material

Cabinets built with oak or cherry or other hardwoods can be spectacular. They can also be expensive, and they don't necessarily function any better nor last any longer than cabinets make from pine, plywood or medium-density fiberboard (MDF).

7. Go with Ready-To-Assemble Cabinets

Ready-to-assemble (RTA) cabinets are delivered to your house on a pallet, completely unassembled. It is then up to you to put them together and install them. It's a fair bit of work, but also a great way to save a lot of money. You don't need to know much about carpentry or possess many tools to work with RTA cabinets.