Category: Kitchen

We bought a two basin stainless steel kitchen sink, and we need to install it into a temporary chipboard benchtop (a piece of leftover flooring) prior to our real benchtops arriving.

The procedure is no different than installing it into a real bechtop – cut a hole, silicone around the edge, then drop it in place. (for the temporary benchtop we are leaving off the silicone, so we can get it out again). Then hook up the drain plumbing and insert the tap.

We have a problem though, which I did not forsee. Whilst the sink fits within the cabinet, it does not fit between the top door hinges.

We like the sing, so we don’t want to return it and swap it over.

So, the only option is to relocate the top door hinges. I can re drill the large holes for the hinge using my drill press and the appropriate forstner drill bit. I think we will just have to put up with the original holes in the doors that will now be exposed.

Assembling Kaboodle cabinets is relatively straight forward. The instructions are clear and the predrilled holes are well placed. If you have a general sense of how things should go together you wont have too much trouble.

Having a second person to hold things and help turn cabinets over is advised. All you need is an electric screw driver and drill. The drill is required when joining cabinets together, fixing cabinets to the walls, and installing the draw runners, draw fronts and end pannels. You will need some drill bits ranging from 2mm to 4mm, and a countersink bit.

The cabinets are will packed, though I would have preferred they used cardboard spacer packing rather than polystyrene.

All the cabinets are screwed to each other and to the walls (drill your own holes).

Fo us, levelling the cabinets was easy. The cabinet feet are in 3 parts – a cup that is screwed to the base of the cabinet, a leg piece that is push fit into the cup, and then a foot that is screwed into the leg an is thus adjustable. We eliminated the foot piece altogether for two reasons. Firstly, we have a soffit overhead and by eliminating the foot we can just squeeze in the cabinets, benches and wall cabinets that sit on the benches, with about 10-15mm to spare. Also we wanted lower bench heights because one of our family members is quite short, so a lower bench height is more comfortable. Because the kitchen sub floor is quit flat and level, eliminating the adjustable foot meant that the cabinets were level by default. It just worked out that way. What it does mean though is that I have to rip down the kick rail to fit – quite simple on my table saw.

Small problems with Kaboodle details

Nothing is perfect, and I will list out some of the issues I have found with Kaboodle.

Scratches on doors

We got the vinyl wrap doors, with the heritage profile. The backs of some of the doors have minor scratches. Though not a huge issue, ist a little annoying. I suspect its a packaging and handling issue in the factory.

Stickers don’t come off easily

The backs of the doors have stickers on them. They are a pain in the but to get off. Its obvious that you will want to take them off, so they should use a less aggressive adhesive.

Hinge screw hole inserts don’t grip well

For the euro hinges, there are predrilled holes in both the doors and cabinets. These holes have little plastic inserts in them. I suspect their purpose is to help prevent the small screws from stripping in the MDF and chipboard. The problem is that the screws dont grip in the inserts very well either.

Many of the screws slipped in the inserts. So we have resorted to winding the screws with plumbers teflon tape first, and this is proving to work quite well.

Corner cupboard doors sag a bit too much

There is a bit of weight in a two part corner cupboard door, so the primary door has 3 hinges, which is good. However I have not been able to adjust the hinges well enough to prevent the secondary door from sagging a little. I would prefer to use Hettich hinges on these doors, as I have done on the normal doors. However Kaboodle does not sell Hettich hinges for corner cupboards – go figure. This is an oversight on their part.

You can see in the above picture that the bottom of the secondary door does not line up very well with the cupboard.

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.

What follows is a series of tips and things to consider when building a house and planning for the kitchen.

Electrical outlets

Plan where you want appliances to go (dishwasher, microwave, stove, kettle, toaster, fridge, etc) so you know where to put power points. For example the microwave and dishwasher power points will probably need to go under the benchtops, so you will need to cut holes in the back of the cabinets.

What I suggest is that you ensure there is extra cable at the back of the power point when the electrician fits off these power points on the wall. Then, when you come to install the cabinets, you take the power point off, drill/cut a hole in the cabinet, poke the wire through the cabinet, and mount the power point onto the inside of the cabinet back, rather then the wall – much neater.

Plan out your cabinet sizes and spacing and ensure that the power points don’t line up with the edge of a cabinet – that will be a real pain to deal with.

For a toaster and kettle, you may want a power point inside a benchtop cabinet.

Plumbing for sink tap and dishwasher fixtures.

Normally the fitoffs for tap fixtures sticks out past the plaster board face just enough to screw on a shutoff valve/tap. However when the cabinets go in these fixtures need to stick trough the cabinet backs as well, which means the fixtures need to poke out an extra 20 to 30mm. This is very easy to forget when you are fixing in the plumbing into the stud walls.

Kitchen taps and window ledges

You will often put the kitchen sing under a window. If you are using timber window frames, you may have a window sill/ledge that protrudes out from the wall face by 20 to 30mm or more.

Just be aware that this may get in the way of your sink faucet. If the faucet mounts behind the sink and the bench is a typical 600mm deep, you may not have enough space for the faucet.

If there is some sort of decorative ledge between the back of the bench and the wall, then you will be OK.

Blocking

You may need blocking in the stud walls to screw things to:

• Base cabinets
• Wall cabinets
• Shelves
• Range hood

It takes a fair bit of foresight to plan for this, but its worth it. Take photos of all the walls BEFORE the plaster is hung, so you know where the blocking is!