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.
