RTA (Ready-To-Assemble) Cabinetry

The “good” in good, better, best

Cheap doesn’t always mean low quality. That has been our experience with RTA cabinets. Most manufacturers we have used have quality paint finishes, plywood cabinet boxes, dovetail drawer boxes and soft close doors and drawers.

So why are they so much cheaper? Main reason I see is that they limit the number of options available. For instance, most semi-custom cabinetry lines will have 10-20 paint or stain colors. They will offer the drawers, doors and face frames in many different species of wood and they will offer most cabinets in 3” increments, both width and height. RTA lines typically only offer 5 or 6 different colors, a handful of door styles and much more limited options in cabinet boxes.

A good example of a limitation we see a lot is our RTA line does not offer 39” tall wall cabinets. For 8’ ceilings, 39” wall cabinets are an ideal height to allow 18” between countertop and bottom of wall cabinet and enough room at the top for a 3-4” crown to meet pretty close to the top of the cabinet door. Because our options for wall cabinet height jumps from 36” to 42”, we need a 6”ish crown riser installed above the cabinets for the crown to hit.

In general, RTA cabinets are a great value and we don’t hesitate to recommend them on projects that budget is top of mind.