MONEY SAVING IDEAS

To start off the New Year, I would like to talk about money saving ideas for your new kitchen.

These are decisions you can make for a remodel or new construction that will substantially affect your bottom line.

First, I would like to dispel a myth. Many people think that particle board cabinets, now known as Furniture Board, are not a good purchase. Folks think that they are inferior to all wood cabinetry when in fact they are not. They are simply made with different materials and will hang on your walls for as long as all wood cabinetry when installed correctly.

If you have a flood it doesn’t matter what your cabinets are made of you will be replacing all wood cabinets exactly like you would the furniture board cabinets. After all mold is mold and will affect what it touches pretty much the same.

The savings? Try starting at an 8% overall kitchen savings to much more depending on where and what you buy. Wood doors VS. Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF) doors.

Once again there is an overall thought process out there that says a wood door is superior to an MDF door. Not true. In fact, the opposite is true especially when living in a high humidity environment like we do. MDF does not warp. It does not expand and contract as wood does every day and when using painted product MDF doors will not crack and the paint will not peel.

The savings on the cost of the doors in your kitchen can be as much as 11% from wood to MDF.

While on this subject MDF only works with paint. Stains must be on wood doors. This is where you want to be very careful with who you choose to buy your product from. Quality product will have quality wood doors with the miters carefully structured so the corners, the most common defect, do not pull apart. Do not be afraid of wood but don’t look for quality wood at cheap prices.

One more cost saving idea for you. Drawers. We have a lot of clients who like the idea of the shelves behind base cabinet doors rolling out to them. For some reason switching to drawers instead of rollout shelves hits a roadblock with some folks. The fact is drawers are faster, easier and, here it comes, less expensive than roll out shelves.

We here at Kitchens by Clay wish you all a very Healthy, Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Enjoy your home,

Clay Cox

clay@kitchensbyclay.com