Like most households, we need a kitchen. Kitchens are expensive – they are typically the most expensive room in the house unless you do an indoor pool or cinema !
For this workshop/studio that we are building first, a bespoke kitchen could not be justified. I thought about building it myself, as I have the skills and tools, but in the interests of expediency we decided to get a flatpack kitchen, as I have too may other jobs to do.
Which flatpack supplier to use ?
We ended up getting quotes from three vendors – Kitset, Ikea, and Kaboodle. For the kitchen we want, it turns out that they are all roughly the same price, depending on which options you pick, like benchtop surfaces, hardware fittings, and door styles.
Kitset are no longer in business, so that took them out of the equation – luckily we did not order before they went into liquidation.
The Kaboodle cabinets are slightly better than Ikea, in that they have solid chipboard backs rather than ply/masonite/thin mdf. Also, they have the option of using Hettich hardware, which is a better product than their default hinges and draw runners.
Also, Kaboodle is supplied through Bunnings, so its a bit more convenient than Ikea for us.
We did get an in-home consultant from Bunnings to come out and help design the kitchen, which helped quite a bit. We could have figured it out for ourselves, but they know the sizes and product line, so we felt they may be able to suggest things we did not think of.
The Kaboodle sales brochures are actually quite good too, showing all the options, product sizes, and complete kitchen ideas.
So, we went for Kaboodle.
Deciding which components you need
The in-home consultant had provided us with cabinet layouts and 3D renderings, so I then went through it carefully to understand what bits we were going to need. I remeasured the space and changed a few minor details (swapped a packing piece for a slim 200mm cabinet for example).
One thing to note: you need sidepanels on the ends of cabinets where they abut a wall so there is room to open the cabinet door. These panels are relatively expensive when you consider that you only see the edge of the panel and 20mm of the face. So I swapped some of these end panels for kick rail – I’ll just slice up the kickrail as required – much cheaper.
Once we figured out what we wanted we headed down to Bunnings.
Buying the kitchen
Our nearest Bunnings has just relocated to a new store, and its massive, thus its really well stocked. The staff were really helpful, and we selected all the bits and pieces, and what they didn’t have (the Hettich hardware and sink) we placed on order.
I think all up there was about 50 boxes ! This included laundry and bathroom cabinets as well.