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Cabinets can make or break a kitchen. Countless hours of research, many trips to the store, phone calls and appointments with the professionals have all yielded valuable information that I will share with you here today. This information alone could possibly save you hours upon hours, even weeks or months of research, which is about the amount of time it took me to gather. I know for the busy real estate investor, time is money, so consider this my gift to you.

Unless you have a strange configuration that would require going with custom cabinets, I would strongly suggest only using In-Stock cabinets and here's why. Say you order a non-stocked, 4-6 week lead time cabinet and after they arrive you discover that either you have measured wrong or they shipped the incorrect item. Either way, you will have to wait for the replacement to come in. Not only will this eat heavily into your timeline but you can bet that if the error was your fault the vendor may take the full 4-6 weeks to process and reorder.

The delays only help to make the problems snowball because the completion of the other items namely, the counter-tops, are dependent first on the completion of the cabinets. You cannot even measure for countertops until the cabinets are in and placed. If you will be using tile, you can figure supplies mathematically, but in the case of solid surface tops like Corion, granite, quartz and the like you must have your cabinets placed and set before they will even measure, much less start the order. These are the kinds of problems you don't want to deal with so, I have found that using only In-Stock products helps to eliminate the problem.

Another great reason to go with stocked product is that many times the goof ups (incorrectly ordered cabinets) can be returned for full value and another picked up in its place, regardless, of whose fault it was. This amounts to a huge savings if you compare In-Stock goofs only cost you time whereas, special order goofs can cost you big money as well. Not only will you need to pay for replacement costs, but freight also. Sometimes In-Stock can be an even exchange or even get a full refund if the difference is in your favor.

Lowes has a nice maple, raised panel cabinet on the shelf and comes already assembled and is the best value in my opinion. They are not the quality of the Contractor's Warehouse cabinets mentioned in Part II of this article but you can't beat the price and the fact that they are in stock is a must.

Contractor's warehouse on the other hand, is one of the best in stock resources for a better quality cabinet and I love the increased options of things like spice racks and decorative details. They even stock the crown molding if you are using it which I would highly suggest in giving a finished look to your kitchen project. They offer a beautiful maple, white and an awesome higher end cherry wood product straight off the shelf. This is more of a do it yourself place so don't count on the service you might get at some of the big box stores. You will have to figure out your needs and make sure, if you do have to return something, that is hasn't been touched, meaning installed. They are not quite as easy to work with as the other larger stores but the products offered are exceptional in certainly most, but not all, cases.

Home depot offers an In-Stock product as well but it comes KD (knocked down) so I avoid altogether. If you are super handy and plan on doing it yourself go for it since the price point is a fair amount less than all the other options but the time it takes to assemble eats into my precious timeline for the completion of my project so this for me is not even an option. One thing that inherently seems to happen with the KD products is getting pieces where the holes don't line up. They are Mickey Mouse and seem to me to not be worth the effort and hassle.

Read Part II of this article for The Real Bonus.

Hope this information was helpful and remember, that when you ask someone who knows, you save yourself countless hours of research and time. Our aim is to help you discover powerful lessons learned from real estate investing nightmares that will make you a fortune.