When I needed to do a kitchen renovation to bring my house into the 21st century, instead of the disco era that it was made in, I didn’t have a lot of money to spend. I needed new cabinets badly, the ones I had looked terrible, and were in terrible shape. I could have painted them, but that would have only taken away a bit of the disgusting look they had, a band aid solution at best.
The other areas of my kitchen weren’t that bad, the last owners had put in some nice laminate flooring throughout most of the house, and the kitchen was included in that. I had some nice appliances which had a modern look, they looked terribly out of place in the old kitchen, but they themselves looked nice. The only things that really needed done other then the cabinets were the walls needed painted, new countertops were needed, and a backsplash was in desperate need.
I could afford the countertops, paint, and backsplash, but that left a tiny amount in my budget for cabinets. I needed to find some cheap kitchen base units, some equally cheap kitchen wall units, and at least two cheap free standing kitchen units. My kitchen had two pantry’s which I really liked, but I could trade one out if need be.
I decided to check around on the internet for tips about how to get kitchen units for cheap, and found an interesting article at http://thehomeandgardenproject.com/ where the guy talks about ways you can save a ton of money getting cheap kitchen units, instead of paying the retail price. In the article, he said that you can sometimes get cabinets and such for free, or very cheap from homeowners who are doing their own renovation, the only problems are that you might have to wait for a while, and that you don’t get much choice in what they look like. This didn’t matter to me, as I wasn’t on any sort of timeline, and the longer it took, the more money I could save for my renovation.
I decided to go public with my search, taking out want ads in the local papers, asking around if anyone knew someone who was planning to renovate, I even phoned some contractors to ask them if they could give me names of people who were doing kitchen renos. Most of the contractors didn’t get back to me, but I got a few good leads from the other places, and I would contact the people, making sure I told them I would help to remove their old stuff if it would make it cheaper.
It took me just over six months to find some cabinets that I really liked, and I had helped out five different people tear out their old cabinets (I felt that some people responded only because they needed the help), but in the end I got some great looking cabinets that I absolutely love. I even got a pantry, just one though, my other free standing unit has some cabinets above, and below my microwave, and I’ve come to like it just as much as an extra pantry.
I forgot to mention the best part, James, the guy I got those sweet cabinets from, said that helping him take them down was all the payment he needed, since he didn’t have to pay the contractor for another few hours work. I used the extra money that I had saved getting the kitchen cabinets for free to get a marble countertop, and it is spectacular.
