How is the paint quality on your DIY kitchen?

[Kudukudu]

We rented out our house for a little under two years with a brand new DIY Kitchens kitchen freshly installed. Our tenants have moved out leaving 28 chips and scratches on the cabinet paintwork, which were flagged up by the inventory clerk as being beyond "fair wear and tear."

The tenant is refusing to accept our claim of a contribution from the deposit towards touching up the paintwork on the grounds that they "believe the paint on the units to be inadequate and of poor quality which resulted in the scratches."

So I am interested to know: how is the paintwork bearing up on your DIY Kitchens kitchen? I've had a painted kitchen before and never seen chips and scratches like this so I'm interested to know if the paintwork is particularly vulnerable - or our tenants just haven't treated it with respect.

Thank you for sharing your experiences.

I did my kitchen 2.5y ago and the only chips in any of the cupboards' paintwork are the two we made installing them 😳 I've got three kids under 9 and a dog if that helps.

I have only had my DIY kitchen for two years and really dissapointed the doors have not aged well and they are peeling.

No chips though I should say just bubbling and peeling.

Thank you Marjolaine - that's useful to know.

And BlodwynBludd - sorry to hear of your bad experience. Ours is definitely not bubbling or peeling - it's just the chips and scratches.

Is that a foil wrapped door Blodwyn?

18 months old now. The quality is excellent. Two minor chips from the door edge getting clobbered so not unexpected. That level of damage is ridiculous and won't be down to quality

Oh DIY Kitchens won the Which Best Buy award last year so says something

My painted DIY kitchen is 3 and a half years old and the paintwork is in perfect condition so what your tenants have done sounds unreasonable to me.

Clarrylove yes I think it is. I was happy with everything else from them but the doors have been really dissapointing.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply.

We have a painted DIY kitchen and no chips, etc a year after fitting.

4 year old painted DIY Kitchen and in perfect condition apart from a slight crack in the bit of “cornicing” under the cabinet where we boil the kettle.

Otherwise looks brand new

Thank you wowfudge and oliversmumsarmy - it’s good to be reassured that our kitchen is good quality. I feel so sad to see it so knocked about but hopefully we can make it look good again.

Is there a pattern to where the marks are at all? I'm wondering if they let their kids scooter round the kitchen or something. You'd have to be really careless or doing something like constantly banging into the units to cause so many marks. If they're all at a similar height, etc it suggests a pattern of how it's been treated.

We've a DIY kitchen that was installed a little over a year ago and we've already agreed we wouldn't have another one. When we received the kitchen, the paintwork on a couple of the doors wasn't particularly even and I raised this with the company at the time. They weren't interested and said it was part of the "charm" of a painted kitchen. Didn't get anywhere with them, despite it being two doors on the front of a cabinet with different levels of coverage.

Our island is graphite whereas the wall units are light grey. The light grey is ok, but the graphite is definitely showing up scratches. There are a few around the dishwasher just from the general wear and tear of using it. So I think it is quite possible you could have marks without hard treatment. Did DIY kitchens not give you a touch up pack with the installation kit?

Ours is the foil finish and i had to drill a lot of them for fitting and the drill struggled to get through the coating it was so hard. So i would say it's hard to damage except by negligence

Ours is a year on and no chips at all. I have 2 dc and a clumsy dh so I’d say that says a lot about the quality.

There are lots of chips and scratches on some of the painted kitchens in the showroom if that helps? Especially if the doors or drawers have become misaligned, or if there is a hinged corner cupboard.