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Get your FREE Kitchen
Quotes:
We recommend
that you use BOTH the Need
Contractor and Reliable
Remodeler
services to get the best quote for your home improvement project. Both services
are FREE.
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Kitchen
Secret #10
Your own made-to-measure designer kitchen... or is it???
You
must have seen the adverts –
"Your
made-to-measure kitchen for the price of a flat-pack!"
The
vast majority of kitchens are however made to standardised sizes. Imagine
if every kitchen was made to order! The intricate designs within doors
would have to be duplicated – but very slightly smaller. It would be
very difficult indeed for a kitchen company to start manufacturing some
doors at 437.7mm wide with a double carcass internal width of 841.4mm,
assuming a carcass width of 17mm.
 And
in addition to the immense challenge for the designer kitchen company
to produce such a size – for the average kitchen there really is no
point! However, it is a very saleable commodity for a kitchen company
to market its services by announcing that it’s kitchens are custom
made. Custom made is of course a relative phrase and never applies
to every part of the kitchen – think about the worktops, cornice, plinth
etc.
Most
kitchen doors sold in this country are pre-made in 300, 400, 500 and
600mm (12 inch, 16 inch, 20 inch and 24 inch) sizes. Kitchens can still
look superb whilst sticking to these four particular door widths – and
on the bright side, greater standardisation should of course mean a
reduction in cost due to economies of scale. (Notice the should
in that particular sentence!)
The most important
consideration should be how practical and appropriate the kitchen style
and quality is for your particular home.
Only very, very
rarely would a kitchen designer come up with an occasion when a wholly
custom-made piece of furniture is required.
Virtually
every 'designer kitchen' within the present marketplace will have some
sort of ‘filler panel’ in it - fillers are much more common than you
think. It's a great way to hide the fact that you can't use space.
For
example, if a row of kitchen units begins with a tall oven-housing unit
next to the wall, to give reasonable access to the appliance it is necessary
to bring it out a few centimetres. (Refer to figure 2 in Kitchen Secret
7) It is also quite common for a filler panel to be utilised next to
the first wall cabinet in a corner. Commonly, walls aren’t straight.
This means that it works better to fix the first wall cabinet a few
centimetres from the corner
and then use the blended filler to take the ‘look and feel’ all the
way to the wall. One other reason why such a cabinet would also start
out a few centimetres from the wall is the fact that the door would
struggle to open properly otherwise.
Quality
in a kitchen doesn’t arrive from making something to order. Quality
comes from fixing something together & ensuring that it remains
‘flush’.
One
more secret that kitchen companies use to make sure that your kitchen
lies in the right place is to alter the size of the worktop.
Worktops generally come in 3 sizes – 600, 700 and 900mm deep. If your
kitchen base needs to be ‘stretched’ due to a squint wall or the location
of a fixed appliance such as a cooker, then the fitter has the option
of placing the front of the cabinet at a location that he prefers and
working back by ‘scribing’ the worktop to the correct size and shape.
The size of the cabinets remains the same, however the ‘gap’ behind
them increases.
The
final area
to consider when designing a kitchen with fixed sized cabinets is immovable
objects. Whether they are  electricity
sockets, a stop tap for the water, an electricity meter or a gas meter.
All these objects can be planned around as long as enough planning goes
into it. For instance, you need to make sure that your kitchen designer
hasn’t made one electrical socket almost impossible to use due to its
location. It’s what you do with it that counts. Remember that most designer
kitchen companies use the same, standard sizes. Most, if not all of
what you want can be accomplished. As long as if some thought is put
into it!
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