My closet is almost done. Do you feel like you’ve been hearing that for a month now? Because I’ve been saying it for about a month now. I’m not lying when I say it. The closet truly is almost done. But all of the finishing details just seem to drag on and on and on. But when you look at the closet as a whole, as it stands as of this morning, it really does look almost finished, right?
But this morning, I was thinking to myself, “Ugh. I could have gotten this done so much faster had I just used IKEA cabinets instead of building everything from scratch.” There are many reasons I decided to build from scratch. IKEA Pax cabinets didn’t come in the sizes I needed to take full advantage of all of the space in this room. They also didn’t come in the depth that I wanted. So those are the main reasons I decided to build from scratch.
I’ve already done a cost comparison of the two and determined that building from scratch saved me about $1000. That’s a pretty significant savings (for me, at least, but maybe not to some), but there’s generally a tradeoff when you go the money-savings route and DIY more of a project yourself. And that tradeoff is always time.
I’ve been told time and again that you can have things (1) done really well, (2) done inexpensively, or (3) done fast, but you can’t have all three. If you want something done really well and done inexpensively, it’s going to cost you an arm and a leg. If you want it done inexpensively and fast, it won’t be done well. And if you want something done well and done inexpensively, it won’t be done fast. So there’s always a tradeoff, and you have to decide which one of those three you’re willing to sacrifice. We may choose different tradeoffs depending on our individual circumstances or what’s important to use on a particular project.
But I think there’s also another big element to consider when deciding whether to go the build-from-scratch route or the ready-made route, and that’s the number of customizations you intend to do once the ready-made part is in place. I know that doesn’t apply to everyone. Lots of people purchase ready-made cabinets (or ready-to-assemble cabinets) that are already painted or finished just the way they want them, and in that case, once they’re put together and installed, you’re done. There may be some minor details, like fill strips, that have to be done. But once they’re assembled and installed, they’re done for the most part.
But that almost never applied to me. 😀 I’m big on customizations (in case you haven’t noticed). I’m almost never satisfied with things as they come right out of the box. (I know this is probably shocking and brand-new information to you. 😀 ) For me, the things that come right out of the box are almost always “a good start” that then need the “Kristi touch” to make them mine.
My studio cabinets are a prime example. On those cabinets, I started with IKEA Sektion cabinets, which means that I paid more for them than I would have had I built them from scratch myself. The cabinets in that room would have been a pretty fast and easy project had I been satisfied with them as they came out of the box. I probably could have gotten all of them installed and been done with all of the cabinets in the span of nine days start to finish (two weekends and one work week). But in true Kristi fashion, the out-of-the-box cabinets were just a good start.
So once I installed them, that was just the beginning of a very long process, not the end.
At that point, had I been ready to unbox all of the doors, install the doors, and cover the toekick area, spending that extra money to get it done faster would have been a great tradeoff. But my process was very different. I then spent a great deal of time on all of the customizations that I wanted for my studio. And all of those customizations meant that all of that time savings by buying ready-made (or ready to assemble) pretty much went out the window.
It took what seemed like forever to add trim, a custom paint color, and gold leaf detail on all of the cabinet doors and drawer fronts. And then I trimmed out all of the cabinets in the office area of the room so that they would look like inset doors and drawers rather than full overlay doors and drawers. And then I added lights. And then I built a bridge. And then I added all kinds of trim.
Now let me just state for the record that I really do love IKEA cabinets. If they offered any styles of doors and drawer fronts that I loved right out of the box and didn’t require any customizations to suit my style and taste, I’d probably opt for IKEA cabinets every single time. But they don’t.
So in the end, I’m not sure that starting with IKEA cabinets as a start to any of my projects is really beneficial. That doesn’t mean that IKEA cabinets (or another ready-to-assemble brand of cabinets) wouldn’t be beneficial to someone else. But really, the only benefit it served for me was not having to cut plywood. I still had to assemble the boxes. I still had to do all of the customizations. And in hindsight, I really don’t know that spending that much more money for that one benefit was a good payoff for me.
And I think the same would have been true for my closet. While that thought did cross my mind this morning (and several times before) that I should have just done IKEA Pax wardrobes and this would have been much faster, I then look at all of the customizations I’ve done to these cabinets in the closet and realize that starting with IKEA Pax probably wouldn’t have saved me much time after all. And I would have started off spending $1000 more than I did right off the bat.
My studio mural wall cabinets, from the day I started putting the cabinets together until the day I finished this wall completely, took me four months. (That includes everything else on this wall as well — wallpaper, countertop, etc. — and I’m sure that I didn’t focus 100% of my attention on this wall during that time.)
Anyway, I say all of that to say that I’m actually very glad, in hindsight, that I built all of my closet cabinets from scratch. And while I’m so tired of working on this project, and I’m ready to move on to the next, I really don’t think that starting with IKEA Pax wardrobes would have saved me much time at all, and they would have added $1000 to the price of my closet.
So when thinking through that tradeoff when determining if you want to go with built-from-scratch or RTA cabinets, consider the customizations (if any) that you want to include. That could be a huge determining factor in whether or not RTA cabinets will actually add to any time savings in the end. And if you’re like me, and always want things to be unique and customized, the RTA option probably won’t save you a whole lot of anything. But if you’re fully satisfied with the way they look right out of the box, and with the finish that comes on them, they can and will definitely save you a WHOLE lot of time, making that additional cost worth it to you.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
