I’m excited to share something with you. I have heard about Ready To Assemble Cabinets (RTA), but never tried them. When I built my home, I went to a full service kitchen designer showroom and all of my cabinets were custom-built and designed exclusively for my kitchen and my needs. Along with that service came a pretty hefty price tag.
I know that it’s hard for most families to fork over a huge amount for cabinets and being that I had some projects going on that were going to include cabinetry, I thought it would be a good idea to try some RTA cabinets. I not only thought it would be great to see the amount you can save as well as judge the quality and ease of assembly but knew that my readers would appreciate the in-depth look.
There are many places you can buy RTA cabinets from and I knew some things going in. First I wanted cabinets that had all wood construction without any particle board. I wanted to deal with a company that provided upstanding customer service and I wanted the cabinets to look good, have nice features and be easy to assemble. I didn’t want a nightmare with boxes sitting on top of pallets in my garage because they were just too difficult to put together. So, I was lucky to find CSH- Custom Service Hardware and work with one of their wonderful representatives named, Howie. Howie worked with me extensively, he never once said a word as I changed designs but came up with rendering after rendering of my ideas.
The first project we worked on was the laundry room, where we are adding some cabinetry and a 36″ stainless steel farmhouse sink for a sort of butler’s pantry. I picked the Wheaton Cabinetry by JSI and recently we assembled them. I want to share the assembly process of 2 of the units with you. I will share an upper cabinet and a lower drawer unit. The upper cabinet is quite large as we went with a 42″ tall cabinet that is 27 inches wide. The drawer unit is 30 inches wide.
Below you will find the description of the Wheaton Series Cabinets from the CSH Website:
These Wheaton Series kitchen cabinets feature all wood construction in a cream painted maple with a light brown glaze for a soft and traditional look. The full overlay, solid raised panel doors and matching drawer fronts add to the appeal. Some notable features include plywood sides, tops, bottoms and shelves, solid wood dovetail drawer box and full extension, soft closing, undermount drawer glides. Our easy assembly is perfect for those who love to DIY and save some cash!
Once the boxes are open the pieces should quickly be checked against your instruction sheet to make sure everything is there. The Wheaton cabinets are a simple assembly using cam locks and some screws. The cam locks are not what you find in particle board furniture you get at Walmart but a very easy device that is simple to secure. Right out of the box we were impressed with the quality, the shelves are nice and thick and finished with a poly type varnish for durability as is the inside of the cabinet. The cabinet doors are thick and substantial with beautiful details and finish on the raised panel doors. The drawers are dovetailed and they are comparable to what I have in my custom Amish built cabinets that you don’t see even in many other custom cabinet lines. They have heavy-duty soft close drawer glides not some thin metal glides like you may have seen elsewhere. My husband and I were really impressed.
Wall Cabinet Pieces
Wall Cabinet Front ready to add the sides.
- Simple Easy To Understand Instructions.
Installing the cabinet sides using the Cam Locks.
Next add the cabinet top and then the cabinet bottom.
Top and Bottom on and now ready to add cabinet back.
Cabinet Back is first slid onto the unit.
Next, you secure using 4 screws and the cabinet is built!
Adding the door cushion protectors.
Installing the adjustable interior shelves.
All done, ready to hang and add our cabinet hardware to. This unit will also have a decorative end panel applied to the right hand side.
Wheaton Drawer Unit Ready for Assembly
Other pieces for the drawer unit.
Sides and bottom attached
Ready to install the soft-close drawer glides.
- Soft Close Drawer Glide Installation
Almost Ready For the Drawers
Time to get The drawers
Drawers are fully assembled dovetail units and you just add the drawer front with four screws.
Beautiful Drawers and Love The Soft Close Glides.
Just about done and ready to install.
The cabinets were simple to assemble and took no more than 15 minutes from start to finish for the large upper door cabinet and since this drawer unit was our first it took a little longer to figure it out, but once we did it was a cinch and now we will be able to do the other drawer units in the same time as the upper cabinet. We also went with decorative end panels for the exposed sides of the cabinets to give them a custom high-end look and Howie helped me pick out some great knobs and pulls. I can’t wait to show you it all when we have it completely finished which should be in the next week or so but until then take a look at some of the cabinet assembly. Let me know if you have ever used RTA cabinets and what your experience has been.
Those cabinets are absolutely incredible!!
The decorative panels make these cabinets look so expensive and fancy! Looks great!
look good and wonder how they will hold up
Those cabinets look wonderful. I need to share this with my nephew. They are thinking of getting cabinets for their utility room soon.
These cabinets look really great. How nice that you can get a “big ticket” look without the big ticket price if you’re willing to assemble them!
These cabinets look great. I’ve put together Ikea furniture so I’m sure I could do RTA cabinets as well.
They look fantastic!
Looks fairly simple and straight forward. I’ll have to check em out.
I really like this. I will have to show this one to my sister who bought an older home and wants to replace the cabinets. These looks fantastic
Simple yet elegant. Very nice!
look like quality cabinets and nice design.
Oh those look so nice! I love the color and design!
They look beautiful. I agree with you, no particle board! They look fairly simple to build. I would love to add cabinets to my laundry room so I had somewhere to hide the detergent, etc.
I bet it saves a lot of money putting them together yourself! I like the door cushion protectors and love the Wheaton Series kitchen cabinets.
Those look really good! Very classy!
these cabinets look so nice and fancy. i love that it includes easy to understand instruction.
Wow these look beautiful. I can’t wait to see them when they are all done. They look custom made. Thanks for sharing your progress.
Wow – those are GORGEOUS cabinets. I would have never thought those are ready to assemble cabinets – they are very expensive. Good to know for when we redo ours.
LOOK expensive i meant to say….
The quality and designs of this RTA cabinets are amazing! I cannot believe it took just 15 minutes! beautiful!
I’ve never used them but they look great. Very high end and custom look!
We have never used them but your cabinets are gorgeous!
Wow! These are beautiful. I didn’t even know this type of cabinet was available. I think even my husband and I could assemble these. Thanks for the info
The cabinets are gorgeous and the assembly was so fast! I would have thought it would have taken longer and been more of hassle to put together. What a great way to save money 🙂
I am surprised of the quality and ease of use of the rta cabinets! they look beautiful! You guys did a great job and it matches perfectly with the kitchen!
These cabinets are gorgeous! I’m all about things coming assembled!
Oh I just love that light brown glaze! So pretty! So neat they are easy to assemble too! Look beautiful!
We have never use RTA cabinets. These look great! With a little extra effort, you get “the look” for less!
The cabinets look great. I have assembled smaller projects, but what a way to save money by DIY.
So cool! I would love to try that.
These look awesome! We are owing soon and will be renovating the kitchen…. I will definitely be looking into these!
Those cabinets are beautiful and I love they can be assembled in about 15 minutes. I’m not handy with tools but this sounds like a project even I could do 🙂
I love that they are all wood construction without any particle board. It’s always a good idea to buy better quality so you know it will last longer. These are just gorgeous. Like the thickness and that they are finished with a poly type varnish.
These are gorgeous, I would love to eventually replace ours here and I really like the looks of these
Nice looking cabinets. We need to replace ours and this might be the solution we are looking for !
I love the color and I cannot wait to see your finished work. I have never heard of RTA Cabinets and we just bought a home and I wish I had heard of them first. Their prices are more reasonable and they have many different color selections.
I love these cabinets. They are so beautiful! I’d love to have some in my kitchen.
Very beautiful cabinets! They look easy to put together and install
Beautiful Color in the Cabinets . I would be affraid my kids would get fingerprints all over them.
I love the look of these cabinets and how quickly they are able to be assembled. I’m going to keep these in mind for our next home revamp.
I love the design and finish of these cabinets. Surprisingly they don’t look all that difficult to assemble. It’s nice to see that the project wouldn’t be too intimidating!
I am actually impressed on how beautiful they are. And the money you save is something I love!
Wow, I love this! I wish we would have known about these before redoing our kitchen two years ago! It is well worth it to put something together to save money (thats why I love IKEA!)
These look great!!
I think those cabinets are gorgeous! Such a pretty color. Hard to believe you can install those yourself!
Everything looks beautiful.
I really like the look of these; they look rich & expensive. Great for you if you can save a lot of money. I have gone through a kitchen remodel and the new cabinets were very, very pricey. Please leave us pictures when it is done.
I love the look of those cabinets, they have such a timeless classical look. They seem fairly easy to put together that I might be able to do it along with a little help from family.
I am at my son’s home now and I have to show him this, I really do like them and would look great here.
The cabinets are beautiful. I especially like the glass front. Your pictures made it seem like something I would be willing to attempt.
I love this!! Gorgeous. I would love to re-do our kitchen like this. I had no idea it was easy to assemble. I thought it was really expensive and had to be hired by someone. Very cool!
Oh turned out so beautiful! I love how easy they were to install too! I would love to get some new cupboards down the road! Will have to look into these!
This is gorgeous!
that is probably the most gorgeous cabinet i’ve ever seen. I love the white finish i would never think this is a ready to ensemble cabinet. thanks for letting me know this even existed!!
It looks great! Wanna come do cabinets at my house? lol
What a great high end look
some nice cabinets
Wow – Those look awesome. It give me hope that someday I too can have new. Im totally going to leave this page open for my husband to read!
I love the look and color of these cabinets. Very nice!
Wow, those are nice, but isn’t it hard to get the exact size that you need? Isn’t that why cabinets are often custom fitted because the sizes vary so much?
They are really great to work with and there are a great variety of sizes and trim that will help you fit it to wherever you need it. Wait to you see the master bath reveal!!!
We have been using a couple different lines of RTA cabinets now that do not use the cams or clips. They are making them now with dovetail and glue assembly. Very nice! Thanks for the great write up…
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Great Article…! I like your RTA Cabinets decoration tips and ideas. This is a very helpful post for my cabinet redecorate. Your cabinet decore is awesome and gorgeous. I love your tips and ideas. I get some essential info to your post. Good job. Keep it up and go ahead.
Thanks for sharing your post.
It’s awesome. I’m in love with your kitchen! So warm and cozy.