Kitchens and Cabinets-Save Money

Here are a few tips to save an investor some money on their rehabs. I am sure that you all know that the kitchen is one of the biggest selling points for any home. And they can be expensive. One of the first tricks I learned as a rennovator is a way to renew the cabinets without having to replace them.

Cabinets can get VERY expensive (at least as far as a rehab is concerned) $3k - $8k easily. So if the existing cabinets aren't too damaged, you can easily dress them up without spending thousands of dollars. 

One of the best ways I found was to remove the existing doors, if they are damaged, and replace them with some inexpensive ones from your local supplier (Home Depot, Lowes, Menards). It doesn't really matter if they don't match in color. Just make sure that they fit.

After you have the doors for your cabinets, make sure that the doors you bought fit the cabinets. This is a key step. Once you figure out that they all fit, paint everything. Outisde the cabinets, inside and the doors. After everything is painted and you are sure that they are the way you want them, mount the new doors and voila! you have your new cabinets for under a thousand dollars.

If you have any damage inside the cabinets (i.e. the base under the kitchen sink) replace it with plywood and paint to match. IF you don't want to buy a new countertop, have your contractor dress up the old one. One method that I have used in the past was to tile the existing countertop. It gives it a dressed up appearance.

Tiling the countertop is more expensive than a new countertop (barely) but the return value is worth it. And since you saved all that money on the cabinets, a couple of hundred dollars is still worth the effort.