Kitchen expert needed!

woodbutcher_2

Had a quick look.Chipboard is graded 1-10,with 0-4 being poor quality,5-6 being the average most kitchens are made with and 9-10 being the best.Better quality chipboard carcasses will wear better and it will be less likely fittings will pull out of it.I would be surprised and impressed if any kitchen salesmen knew all this.

Hope you find what you are looking for.

clairehi

thank you Woodbutcher you have been amazingly helpful!

just had the man from mfi round to measure, we are going into the shop hopefully on Sunday for the design appt. will test him on his chipboard knowledge then!

woodbutcher_2

One last piece of advice i would give is,don't let them fit it for you as you will pay through the nose.These places charge as much as £3000 to fit and although you may get a good fitter it is not guaranteed.My mate had a quote from MFI a few years back and i asked him to ask them for a cost breakdown.How much for the units,how much for the appliances and how much for fitting.They wouldn't tell him so i went in and ordered the units ,getting rid of all the stuff they sold him that wasn't really needed and fitted it for him.Saved him nearly £2000.

You'd be far better off getting a local fitter,preferably by recommendation.

clairehi

Agreed on the fitting this will be done by the builder who is doing all the other work and mfi know they are quoting for supply only.

I only want them to supply the units (probably) but I have told them everything else we want ie granite tops, appliances so they can quote for the lot. if they can do a good deal on these things fine. I will be checking prices of everything elsewhere anyway.

andrew-b

The fibres of the wickes carcasses seem pretty dense to me. We had to cut about 5mm off all our plinths after doing the floor tiling but they didn't chip or fall apart on either side of the cut when cutting with the electric table saw. A less dense "Weetabix" material would probably have chipped all over the place. I'd better correct myself that our carcasses are more an ivory/cream colour rather than white, but as i said before you can substitute the side panels of units at the end of a run with ones designed to match the doors.
I'd say wickes seem higher quality than other DIY shop brands..but if you want the best quality then you need a bespoke kitchen with units built to specification though at several times the price at least.

Also i strongly agree with Woodbutcher's advice about not using the stores fitters having made that mistake ourselves.

Andy

Doozergirl

Don't bother asking them to quote on appliances and granite. MFI aren't competitive on either - it's a waste of time, plus the margins on appliances are small for them so you will get a smaller overall discount if you include them. I've even been told by an MFI salesperson that if I did want to purchase appliances, I should do it as a seperate order.

And when you get that final price, ask them to half it. There's much, much more discount available, even with their constant 'sale' prices.

Friends were quoted over £10,000 for their Space Black Kitchen. H went in for them after and got it down to £5,000! It's always like that. Our last kitchen came down from £9000 (sale prices :rolleyes:) to £4800.

Haggle, haggle, haggle!

woodbutcher_2

I'm speaking purely as a kitchen fitter here(or more precisely a fitter of kitchens because it is not what i do exclusively)and i can confirm the margins doozergirl speaks of.Personally i would never buy a kitchen for my own home as i would build it myself(i have a workshop) and the last one i did cost me about £500 in materials including oak worktops.Chipboard,M.D.F. and the like is incredibly cheap and even more so in the quantities these places buy it in.My last house was bought with the intention of staying for a while and moving on,so with this in mind i bought a B and Poo kitchen in the january sales.It was the biggest pile of garbage i have ever fitted.You could see through the melamine finish to the chipboaed particles below it was that poor.I sold my house 18 months later and it was looking very tatty despite me living there alone.It didn't get much hammer.Rant over.

To get back to the point,haggle as doozer said,the mark up on kitchens is huge and with the recession biting it may just be a good time to be buying.

majjie

Woodbutcher's right that no kitchen salesperson is likely to know the density of the chipboard - the kitchen manufacturers don't publish it - and it probably doesn't help anyway.

I don't know where Woodbutcher gets his 10 grades of chipboard from and you can take nerd-dom too far - but (skip this bit if you're easily bored) :-

The British Standard for particle board (all good salesmen will call theirs particle board - not chipboard ) is BS EN312 Part 3 (2003). The grades are P1 to P7. P1 is standard grade. P2 is furniture grade and P3 is moisture resistant furniture grade. The others are flooring grades. The best kitchens meet the P3 standard - but you're very unlikely to find a kitchen company that knows what grade it's chipboard is.

The actual densities vary too. Most companies will call theirs high density but it could vary from around 600 to around 720 kg per cubic metre. Since light MDF is a maximum of 650 kg per cubic metre - I don't see how knowing the density helps.

There is also a British Standard for the overall quality of the units (BS 6222-2). Grade G is for nice people like us. Grade H is for social housing - where they just don't care how they treat their kitchens! . But again most kitchen companies won't know whether their kitchens meet either standard.

In conclusion then, I think you'd be wasting your time trying to measure the density of the carcasses Clairehi. Nearly all the DIY places have two qualities of kitchen. The cheapest ones - from any of them - will have poorer quality chipboard - but they're cheap - that's why. Wickes seem to have a good reputation - but personally I'd avoid their "Take Away" kitchens and only have their main range. Likewise I would go for a B&Q "Select" kitchen (if I could be sure all of it would arrive at the same time) but would avoid their "It" range.

The situation where you do need to be wary is small companies making their own carcasses. They could be using P1 quality chipboard, nailed together, whilst telling you that they use high quality, rigid carcasses.

White carcasses only matter if it bothers you - and if the front edges are white (that's what I don't like about IKEA). If they do colour matched edging tape, then they're fine (from the outside!). The best quality carcasses have PVC or ABS edging rather than melamine - it's less likely to chip.

With any of the more ... economical ... kitchens a good fitter can make a huge difference to the final result.

Apologies for going on - but it's a subject close to my heart. Mind you I just design kitchens - I don't sell them - and I don't fit them either.

woodbutcher_2

I got my information from Google.To say it is not relevant is frankly rubbish and some kitchen manufacturers clearly state the quality of "particle" board used.I make and install kitchens and when i make them i will only buy MDF and chipboard form reputable producers such as Caber and Medite.

clairehi

wow thanks both for the helpful info, its all worth bearing in mind.

I am considering wickes melbourne, howdens haworth, mfi kelmscott and a lSecond Nature Milton as possibles atm. will let you know how we get on, much will depend on how much the building work comes in at and I have not had a single quote back yet....