Replacing Your Kitchen Cabinets on a Tight Budget
My old kitchen cabinets were plain metal ones that had a sticker on the inside of one of the cabinets that said they were purchased from Sears and were manufactured in the early 1920’s. I had a total of two drawers and four cabinets. The counter top was only big enough to hold the crock pot and the toaster at the same time. The sink was a shallow porcelain thing that was badly stained. The people who lived in this house before me were evidently too cheap to try to improve anything here. The old kitchen gave me nightmares.
I immediately decided I needed new kitchen cabinets. The only problem was the budget. I could not afford to purchase brand new kitchen cabinets, but I could not stand to live with what I had for very long, either. It was quite a predicament. I was having to store most of my dishes, and pots and pans in other rooms of my house. It felt like a transient lifestyle. A kitchen needs proper storage.
I was fortunate enough to discover that a friend of mine who lives fairly close to me was also in the market to get new kitchen cabinets. Now, the kitchen cabinets that she already had were pretty impressive to me. After living with the old metal cabinets for nearly a year, I thought everyone’s kitchen cabinets looked great.
Since I still did not have the funds necessary to buy brand new kitchen cabinets and have them installed, I asked my friend if she would be willing to sell hers to me. They were in good shape and there were plenty of them. There were twenty kitchen cabinets, that included a built in trash receptacle, and a lazy Susan. There were also two slide out spice drawers. There were nine big drawers, too. It definitely looked like Heaven to me.
My friend did not want to sell the kitchen cabinets to me, though. She decided to just give them to me since she would have tossed them out anyway. I was over the moon. I was getting kitchen cabinets for free!
I had to hire contractors to do the installation. I purchased new counter tops since the way the kitchen cabinets needed to be installed in my house was different from the way they had been built into my friend’s house. I found very inexpensive counters in my local home improvement center.
It took a couple of weeks to have my kitchen cabinets installed, because I also had the contractors install a brand new floor. The actual process of doing just the cabinets would have probably taken less than a week, otherwise.
If you can find good, used kitchen cabinets that you like it would probably be a wise, money saving way to re-do your kitchen. Even if you have to pay a small amount of money for them, it will still be a lot less expensive to do it this way. Make sure to actually open all of the cabinets and drawers in order to inspect the condition. There are a lot of salvage stores that carry everything one would need for any home improvement job. These are worth checking out.
You can even advertise in your local newspaper for used kitchen cabinets. Also, our local radio station airs a program called “Swap Shop” every morning where people can advertise used items they want to sell, and you can also call in and ask for any item you may be interested in buying. This would be a good way to let people know you are in search of cheap kitchen cabinets.
Replacing your kitchen cabinets is a big job, but it is so worth it when the installation is over. It is even more satisfying to know you’ve done it inexpensively.
My kitchen cabinets look great now, and I have plenty of counter space. I would seriously recommend acquiring good, used cabinets to anyone hoping to replace theirs. I am just as happy as I would have been if I’d bought brand new kitchen cabinets .
