DIY Kitchens

[Flubadubba]

Hi

We are looking at DIY kitchens for a new kitchen and utility. I have a few questions:

• is the solid wood noticeably better quality than the MDF?
• if you had a worktop from them (especially quartz), how was the fitting?
• does anyone have the reed green colour and would be happy to share a photo?

I had mine from them 12 years ago. Happy with build quality. Very solid. I have painted oak doors and everything other than the fridge door (opened by far the most) is minimally marked.

Fitter cut a few filler panels badly and they sent new ones express delivery.

My only issue is the hinges dropped a lot over time. I dont know whether that was the quality of the hinges, our useless fitter or the weight of the doors.

I can only answer your first question. Yes I thought they were definitely better quality, I was really impressed. I have previously bought flat pack units and installed them myself (with help). When my DIY kitchen arrived I decided it was too good to risk me messing it up and got someone in to install it!

Solid wood is definitely better than MDF. We had a kitchen in Wood and utility room in MDF and you really can tell the difference. Not least because a washing machine leak meant that one of the MDF end panels soaked up the water and split it... wouldn't have happened with wood.

Thanks all. They are coming in a fair bit cheaper than Howdens for much better quality, so I was a bit suspicious. I can see that there are a lot of good reviews online, but am generally a little suspicious when there are very few negative ones!

We used tham and were impressed too. And their showroom was fab too!

We had two kitchens from them last year, one for us and one for DM. Ours was solid wood and the carpenter and builder were both really impressed with the quality.

As you've said, Howden's typically drop the quality when they price match, which is really sneaky.

There is a FB group specifically for DIY Kitchens - there are DIYK staff members who answer some of the posts, but the majority are just other customers, fitters, joiners etc. They don't censor posts so you'll see criticisms as well as positive posts. The vast majority of posts seem to be positive, and that echos the experience that I had with them.

The only drawback for us was the delivery details were a bit vague. You only get a window at the last minute and IIRC, the initial window is a 2-day period. Other than that, we found them to be absolutely brilliant. We didn't get our wood worktops from them though so can't help there.

@SpidersAreShitheads I’m in that group and it’s really good for ideas with DIY kitchens. But they do censor a little. The admin changed so it might be different now.

There’s a rule for the group that only reviews that have a photo with a complete / finished kitchen are allowed. so where people have posted about poor quality items received, or waiting for replacements etc but because they can’t add a picture of a complete/ finished kitchen (because they’re not going to use defective units just to post a complaint on Facebook) the posts get removed because it’s breaking that rule. But I’ve seen post where people are raving about the quality before installation or delivery service (so no complete photo) and they never get removed.

not saying it all the time and we are likely to still go with them but I’d be weary of the independence of the information of the fb group