You can't lose with IKEA, in my opinion.

Ikea. That being said, I know some people who put in those off-the-shelf oak cabinets from Builder's Square (they were around before Home Depot), who spent a good amount of time finishing them. After 25 years, they still look great.

www.jadencabinets.com

The problem with any RTA cabinetry is the connecting hardware used. Most manufacturers use the same pin and cam lock system. Nice idea but they don't stay locked properly. This doesn't matter as much when cabinets are in the middle of a run but will undoubtedly come into play on the end of runs and around areas like the range upper where the cabinets are not supported by the next cabinet. Also, the integrity of the bottom and top of the cabinet is depending on usually 2 pins each side to support the weight of dishes. In my experience, this has never lasted the years of abuse cabinets will see. Especially when your talking rentals. You'll be replacing those in no time. Nothing takes the place for proper construction using glued joints. That's not to say glued joints won't fail, but they are certainly more likely to last longer than the pin and cam. I have yet to see a RTA go together with the precision intended. Joints are always out, never meeting properly. You're much better off purchasing an assembled line of cabinetry. You may pay a little more but the extra money will be well invested.

Unfortunately, I've definitely seen it with IKEA and HD and others.

Just tore out a builder grade kitchen with partial board, staples, framed oak and plastic interior corners. Painted at an old age of 16 years. Tear out at 20 years. Cabinets were still standing and given to ReStore. Locally, in general, plywood boxes are not put in due to dry climate. HD or Lowes off shelf will last, how long is the question.

The stock HD and Lowes cabinets will last decades just fine. Yes they are cheaply built, but cabinets stay in one place and unless you get them wet, they will work just fine.

IKEA is also a good option, might be cheaper than stock oak or white cabinets too. Their melamine doors will take a good bit of abuse as well and are easy to clean. Worst case scenario you can always buy more doors, or replace all the doors to change colors for a few hundred bucks.

I put ikea cabinets in my rental. It's been rented for four years and I havent heard of any problems.

You might see if you can find a cabinet shop near you that sells factory seconds. I don't know how many of them there are around, but we were able to do that with one of our rentals.

"Nothing takes the place for proper construction using glued joints. That's not to say glued joints won't fail, but they are certainly more likely to last longer than the pin and cam."

I'd like to see some scientific substantiation of that statement.

I have extensive experience smacking the fronts off base kitchen cabinets with a block and hammer to get sink access. These have been hot melt glued and stapled in place. After I pull the staples, I hot melt the face frames back in place. Having disassembled glued and stapled cabinets many times, I find it hard to believe a pin and cam joint would yield so easily if one had no access to the cam.

"These have been hot melt glued and stapled in place".

So.....it's a glued joint then!

Industrial hot melt glue is usually a polyurethane which is the same a PL Adhesive, so I don't doubt you have had to smack very hard for some time to get it off. I'm sure you've even taken pieces with it.

If you tried that same hammering practice with an unglued joint, it would fall apart in no time, more than likely after 1 hit. I've destroyed the pin & cam joint with just 1 hit of an 8 oz hammer. I too have had a lot of experience with this type of cabinetry and it's never been a good outcome in favour of the pin & cam.

I'm sure most Certified Cabinetmakers & Furnituremakers would back my statement of proper glue joint over the pin & cam.

I have 5 rental properties and I have always used American Woodmark cabinets from HD. So far I have not heard any complaints from any of my tenants.

Hope it helps.

Mindy

I have 3 rental properties. I've used Woodmark, but the cabinet boxes are pressed wood not plywood. I'm totally impressed with RTA GHI cabinets. They're tongue n' groove, solid maple fronts, plywood boxes, softclose. Great price! ....about 1/3 of what I paid for Woodmark @ a HD sale.

Nicole,

Where did you buy RTA cabinets? What are GHI cabinets? I am in No VA area.

Thank you,

Mindy

Sahai6: RTA= ready to assemble, they ship flat, you assemble them.

GHI Custom Cabinets = Brand of RTA cabinets.

If you google GHI custom cabinets you will find a distributor in your area and price listings are available online at most suppliers. I used Brindleton maple in my last remodel:

https://www.google.com/search?q=brindleton+maple+cabinets&newwindow=1&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjggZTMo57MAhUomIMKHc8mBKwQ_AUIBygB&biw=1600&bih=775

http://www.kitchensbathsandmore-pa.com/ghi-custom-cabinetry/

I'm really impressed with these:

http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3843672/my-latest-kitchen-remodel-is-done-before-and-after-pics-included?n=5

It looks like GHI are from China?

I put IKEA cabinets into a to-the-studs remodel of a kitchen in my rental property. Eight years and counting and they're doing fine. They're surviving run-ins with walkers and wheelchairs and occasional leaks. Never a callback to repair the cabinets. JME.

Simcoe Building Centre - Bracebridge - You sound desperate. A hit with an 8 oz hammer? Really? Who cares....

pippabean. "You sound desperate.....who cares?"

Well, I was answering a question and replying to another persons response. Didn't know that was a crime around here. But thanks for chiming in with your worth while response! Not sure where desperation comes into play.

My point is that it doesn't take much to take this stuff apart. It is based on my professional experience. Others have had more positive experiences than I and I'm perfectly fine with that. I'm not bothered that others differ in opinion. Why are you? This is what these forums are here for....to get opinions and help and the OP can hopefully make a decision based on what they have read here.

Simcoe - You were comparing RTA cam and pin box construction to cabinet boxes with glued joints, citing your experience with damage wrought on these cabs through swinging a hammer at them.

Well, that kind of nonsense is in no way helpful to the OP. Unless of course, the OP plans on renting out the apartment to renters who take hammers to their kitchen cabs. The hammer experiment makes an utterly idiotic argument. You might as well rate kitchen cabinets according to how well they withstand chainsaw or assault rifle attacks. And yes, that's desperate.

pippabean....No. I used that reference when replying to Joseph Corlett's response of taking a hammer to these cabinets and how difficult he found it because some of these are glued with hotmelt glue. My response was that "I could use an 8 oz hammer" and it didn't take that much effort. I wasn't suggesting that one should take a hammer to these. Nor was I suggesting that my only experience was with swinging a hammer at these. Don't take things out of context. Both Joseph's and my responses are pertaining to having to take a cabinet apart for one reason or another and had nothing to do with regular use. Of course no one is going to "test" a cabinet with a hammer. The only time I took a hammer to one was to dismantle it, not to test it.

If you read my initial comment, I made a perfectly reasonable statement to why I'm not a fan of these type of cabinets. I have installed these many times, I have had to install countertops on these many times and I have even sold them in the past. I have probably handled these around 50 times in my career. So, my experience is based on the number I've seen and handled in one way or another.

@steve_o:

What style of IKEA cabinets did you use, wood, foil, painted?

The thing is, the more you go on, the less I believe you're not just making things up. So you've installed 50+ RTA cabinets in your career, and found that the camlocks don't stay locked? "they don't stay locked properly. This doesn't matter as much when cabinets are in the middle of a run but will undoubtedly come into play on the end of runs never lasted the years of abuse cabinets will see. You'll be replacing those in no time."

Bull. And it's for sure not our experience or anyone else's I know who has frameless RTA cabs.

We installed our first Ikea kitchen in the late 80s, those were the still metric ones, and were less solidly built than their later Akurum line (they had thinner box walls and shelves). We moved to the burbs, rented that house for a couple of years and eventually sold it. Well, we happen to know the current owners. They're adding on to their house to enlarge their kitchen, so they've just successfully taken down these old cabinets and installed them in their finished basement. Not a one had "loose camlocks" that needed tightening, or was in any way out of kilter or sagging. They had to "hack" one or two if tge cabs to fit into the new space, which was easy enough as they were able to take the boxes apart quickly, made the needed changes, put them back together and hung them. Done.

Being able to take RTA cabs off the wall without having to demolish them is a huge PLUS! These old Ikea cabinets have been successfully recycled and will probably serve another 10 to 20 years in their new digs.

By the way, pretty much all of Europe has lived with mdf and particleboard cabinets that use camlock construction for what, 40 or 50 years? Oh, they've never noticed their cabinets disintegrating on their walls? Must be the air overseas. Maybe you should take your business over there and save all these Europeans from their sagging cabs that otherwise will surely fall and hurt them.

Pippabean, in many European countries, you take your kitchen with you when moving to a new place. Heck, there are rental apts that you have to bring your own cabinets to as well! If IKEA and all the other similar particleboard/MDF cabinets were so poorly built and didnt hold up, you'd bet a tougher solution would have been found. But apparently an entire continent doesnt have the "issues" that "cheap" cabinets have in America.

My parents were really worried about IKEA quality and that I should go with normal American framed cabinets, but eventually relented when they realized that all of our relatives in Europe have IKEA and similar kitchens and have never heard of all-plywood construction and the usual pricey cabinetry buzzwords here. Their kitchens arent falling apart either.

My grandparents in Europe have 60 year old furniture built with cams and locks that still looks beautiful. Well, one wardrobe has sagged, but then grandma has about 500 lbs of fabric and clothes in it, I'm not kidding either.

nosoccermom, they are Akurum cabinets with STÄT fronts -- painted.

An alternative strategy, assuming you have the time: craigslist.

I own or manage a half dozen rental properties. Mostly I upgrade lighting, etc. , when a place turns over.

Over the last decade, I have redone the kitchens in two of the most spacious and desirable rentals, going for good quality used cabinets as opposed to moderately priced but not very nice new cabinets.

The first one was a house we were renovating, so I had time to haunt craigslist, ebay, etc. to accumulate the bits of the kitchen while work was being done on other parts of the house. In my prideful frugality, I posted the saga of that kitchen on Gardenweb, at http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2421625/heres-my-recycled-kitchen-show-me-yours

The recent one was earlier this year, a pretty large kitchen in a three-unit 1895 building. I did not have so much leisure on this project, but I was able to buy not only cabinets but counters used on craigslist. I cannot say that the results blow me away, but improvement was great, and the worst decision I made was on the floor tile, which is brand new and not cheap but boring.

The kitchen put in when the building was renovated in the 1980s had cheap and badly installed tile floors and minimal builders grade cabinets,
with uppers only 30" tall in a 9.5 foot high kitchen. The "fancy" bits were a closet depth pantry and an unsealed exposed brick wall where the backsplash would have been been on the non-window side of the kitchen. I do not have
photos of the before.

For the renovation, I bought good quality maple cabinets with 42" uppers
from Baltimore for $2k and a large quantity of used Mont Blanc Silestone from
DC, which also ran about $2k with the installation. I used pendant lights instead of cans in the ceiling, because I
could not find an affordable cans that work well with such high
ceilings. The backsplash tiles -- actually in colors of gold and blue but on such a small scale that they register as textured neutral -- came from Overstock.

The several leftover cabinets were adopted via freecycle, along with the original sink and appliances; the leftover Silestone I will use in bathroom of another property.

I should say that I am one of those people who likes the idea of designing a kitchen but am a bit too scattered to do it without constraints. The fact of a specific set of cabinets is a context in which other decisions are basically problem solving. This approach would not work for everyone. Some people would say it does not work that well for me either, but I do have fun.

Best of luck on your new rental kitchen, whichever strategy you choose.

That is fantastic! Love the ingenuity and the reuse. Bravo!