Good Quality Flat Pack Kitchen Units Suitable for Boat Use.

[PeterF]

51 minutes ago, Ryeland said:

IKEA?

 

I've just used diy-kitchens.com at home. Really good quality, normally come as rigid, but they are happy to supply unglued so you can modify the carcasses. Good company to deal with, and and worth a trip to their showroom in Yorkshire, where they are just very helpful, and don't try to sell you anything. Just one online price, no stupid discounts.

 

Richard

We are having a new boat built next year and our fitter uses DIY kitchens. I agree with Richard, we went to the showroom and spent several hours mooching around, got help and answers to questions but never any hard sell. They have a huge range of cabinet widths so you can make up runs of cabinets to almost any distance in 50mm steps. They also have some nice end of run curved and angled units. Nearly all their door ranges have a varnished option as well as lots of painted options.

Edited October 4, 2019 by PeterF

[alan_fincher]

54 minutes ago, David Schweizer said:

When I fitted out the galley on Helvetia, I gave up on flat packs as they needed substantial modification to take account of hull tumblehome. I ended up making my own units, and bought the doors from specialits suppliers who sold individual doors for refurbishing existing installations.

The advantage of fitting out a Large Northwich hold is that there is no eal disernible slope on the hull sides, (or more accurately the linings inside them.

 

The existing unit we have has no modifications and seems to but quite neatly against vertical sides.  Whether the whole area we wish to fit is the same I have no idea, as after over 80 years of hard use a fair amount of "reshaping" of the hull has inevitably occurred!

[peterboat]

2 hours ago, stegra said:

Howdens list price should not be taken seriously. No one's mentioned Wren yet. According to their website, Howdens average trade discount is 76 percent, and they claim to be 21 percent cheaper than that discounted price. I've never used them so I don't know what they are like regarding supply only but it would be a bit unscrupulous to advertise comparisons to a supply only company if you only sold fully fitted kitchens. 

 

https://www.wrenkitchens.com/

They dont sell fully fitted kitchens all the time, Brian the neighbour has had a quote from them supply only and Lesley who now works for Howdens worked for Wren the kitchen fitters were independents working for Wren.

[David Mack]

There's a surprising number of not very old fitted kitchens on Ebay. These often come from reasonably large houses so have far more units than you would need on the boat. And some only sell for a couple of hundred quid.  So hire a van, collect the lot, then use the units you want on the boat and throw away the rest (or put them back on Ebay).

[Richard T]

Don't bother with Magnet - we had our kitchen fitted at home earlier in the year. They wouldn't supply a catalogue with unit dimesions in it. Their designer has to sort it out. This pissed me off as I am in interior designer so they didn't get my order. We had Howdens for the units and Benchmarx for the worktops. Benchmarx are Travis Perkins. If you have money to burn De Vol are said to be very good but they wouldn't do an odd sized unit for a friends kitchen. We looked at Ikea but the quality was not what it was when we had our last kitchen from them. A name that has not been mentioned is  Moores - I specified them regularly for kitchens in industrial units etc and they are durable and contractors liked them. https://www.moores.co.uk/

[matty40s]

3 hours ago, alan_fincher said:

Whether the whole area we wish to fit is the same I have no idea, as after over 80 years of hard use a fair amount of "reshaping" of the hull has inevitably occurred!

Indeed!!

 

Howdens are good, you also have TBS in Daventry, on the same road road as screwfix, although the owning organisation may put some off. 

We also know of a very good worktops manufacturer locally if you require something bespoke, shiny or just well built.

[WotEver]

6 hours ago, stegra said:

No one's mentioned Wren yet.

Apart from their budget range Wren cabinets all come fully assembled. I fitted a Wren kitchen at home last year and their prices are competitive but certainly not cheap. I also don’t believe they do any solid wood offerings. 

4 hours ago, peterboat said:

They dont sell fully fitted kitchens all the time, Brian the neighbour has had a quote from them supply only

Yes, ours was supply only.

(They quoted us £3.5k to fit it - dry fit only, electrics and plumbing extra!)

[WotEver]

8 hours ago, Mike Tee said:

as a 'tradesman' you should be able to buy from Howdens at a huge discount...

All of the local builders round here use Howdens. In fact the kitchen I ripped out last year was a 24 year old Howdens. 

[LadyG]

When I lived in bricks and mortar, I struggled to fit units to my 1960's flat, it was Imperial, B&Q assured me they could design it.

The packs were delivered, but there were two doors and one panel left over., I had opened them all in a desperate attempt t fit them as per instructions. 

That was something and Lewis, I understand Ikea units are flimsy, as one might expect.

[WotEver]

3 minutes ago, LadyG said:

That was something and Lewis

Cooke

[AndrewIC]

 Very pleased with our Howdens kitchen in the house, but you’ll need a trade account or a friendly fitter to get stuff ordered. There have a book called the installers guide which is very hard to get hold of, but shows exactly how everything goes together. However, the carcasses come pre-assembled and glued, so that may be an issue on a boat.

[ditchcrawler]

Why has no one mentioned MDF or chipboard 

[stegra]

10 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Why has no one mentioned MDF or chipboard 

Almost all kitchen units are made from chipboard. The majority of doors are made from mdf or chipboard; even the doors that Howdens have the cheek to call Greenwich Natural Oak are melamine-faced chipboard. 

Edited October 4, 2019 by stegra

[alan_fincher]

1 hour ago, LadyG said:

I understand Ikea units are flimsy, as one might expect.

Allegedly not, or at least not so a few years ago.

 

Fairly certain that Koukouvagia reported at some stage he had used Ikea units in one of his (then) two boats, and found them superior to whatever he had used in the first, (though I can't remember what he used in the first!).

 

However I couldn't see anything very appropriate in the current Ikea range when I looked, (albeit briefly, so far).

 

Cooke and Lewis from B&Q was pretty good, (I would have been happy to use them again), but according to reviews, what they have replaced it with now is far poorer.

Edited October 4, 2019 by alan_fincher

[peterboat]

31 minutes ago, AndrewIC said:

 Very pleased with our Howdens kitchen in the house, but you’ll need a trade account or a friendly fitter to get stuff ordered. There have a book called the installers guide which is very hard to get hold of, but shows exactly how everything goes together. However, the carcasses come pre-assembled and glued, so that may be an issue on a boat.

They have flat pack as well 

[AndrewIC]

Just now, peterboat said:

They have flat pack as well 

I sit corrected. That wasn’t suggested, but then there was no need to.

[peterboat]

Just now, AndrewIC said:

I sit corrected. That wasn’t suggested, but then there was no need to.

Its their contractor packs, landlords tend to buy them.

[MtB]

5 hours ago, WotEver said:

All of the local builders round here use Howdens. In fact the kitchen I ripped out last year was a 24 year old Howdens. 

 

I have fitted maybe 25 kitchens I've bought from Howdens over the years. This time however, they have changed beyond recognition, and gone 'up market' and will only sell you what their 'designer' specifies. 

 

A recipe for near instant bankruptcy in my opinion.

[peterboat]

9 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

I have fitted maybe 25 kitchens I've bought from Howdens over the years. This time however, they have changed beyond recognition, and gone 'up market' and will only sell you what their 'designer' specifies. 

 

A recipe for near instant bankruptcy in my opinion.

Mike it isn't like that I have an account and can and do order whatever I want.  The next one is a designer one, which is over 15k but that's still 2k cheaper than Wren and another local supplier 

[MtB]

14 minutes ago, peterboat said:

Mike it isn't like that I have an account and can and do order whatever I want. 

 

When did you last buy one then from Howdens? 

 

It was four weeks ago I was refused a kitchen in Howdens without a visit from a designer. And yes I have a  trade account there too. 

 

 

[peterboat]

23 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

When did you last buy one then from Howdens? 

 

It was four weeks ago I was refused a kitchen in Howdens without a visit from a designer. And yes I have a  trade account there too. 

 

 

I am on my third this year one for Jayne one for Brian's dad's old bungalow and this last one which Lesley is designing

 I would complain to head office 

[MtB]

56 minutes ago, peterboat said:

I am on my third this year one for Jayne one for Brian's dad's old bungalow and this last one which Lesley is designing

 I would complain to head office 

No, CBA complaining to a firm they wont

sell me stuff! I just bought from it from Benchmarx. 

 

 

[system 4-50]

Somewhere there is a secret report that says that if businesses want to make money they have to couple the sale of product to the sale of services, in order to prevent the internet commoditizing everything, and they have to take all products up-market.  It is an unspoken conspiracy.  I haven't seen the report or have any evidence of its existence but its footprint is everywhere.

[cuthound]

This company use solid wood cabinets and doors.

 

https://www.solidwoodkitchencabinets.co.uk/

 

They are on my shortlist for a new quality kitchen supplier.

Edited October 5, 2019 by cuthound
To remove a space masquerading as a letter.

[WotEver]

11 minutes ago, cuthound said:

This company use solid wood cabinets and doors.

 

https://www.solidwoodkitchencabinets.co.uk/

Yeah, they were mentioned in post #3. They do look good.