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The designs of diy
kitchens as well as the materials
used has changed dramatically over the past few hundred years. All though
kitchens are mostly still built with wood the types of wood
finishes differ but the concept still remains the same.
Kitchens
must be practical and functional.What a pleasure to work in a kitchen
that's well organized,where every item is easily accessible and where
people don't fall over each others feet trying to move around. If your
kitchen is well designed
you won't have this problem.
Kitchens
can be small but spacious
Think of it this way.Before
you got a bigger desk for your office you made the small one work best
you can. You made sure there was a place for every object and that your
desk was neat to prevent wasting space(I hope).On the other hand.Have
you ever had a small desk that just had enough space for all your items,then
bought a bigger a realized you had less space to put things on.You didn't
have less space you just never organized your bigger desk well.The
same applies for your kitchen.Just
create more storage space.
Break
down those walls
The days of kitchens being
the hidden part in a house is long gone and replaced by modern open plan
kitchens with kitchen
islands.I mean who wants to stand in front of the stove while
their friends are having a ball in the living room.Instead why don't you
knock down that wall you're hiding behind and make the living room and
kitchen one big entertainment area.You can then build a diy kitchen island
or breakfast nook for your mates to sit at while you cook up a storm.Doing
this you might even create more space in the kitchen.Space that could
be filled with more cupboards and counter tops.
Grand
looking back splash
As you will notice most older
kitchens have huge tiles against the wall for a back splash. These days
much smaller tiles are used to create that modern finish in kitchens.
Bigger tiles are still in fashion but mostly tiles with small grouting
between them.Cladding is one of the most fashionable trends used to modernize
kitchens but can also cost and arm and a leg. Another material used in
kitchens as a back splash is granite.The backsplash is normally the same
granite used on the floor cabinets and can be anything from 100mm high
up to the ceiling. Learn what to protect you kitchen
counters from.
Why
are diy kitchen cupboards quicker & easier?
Diy kitchen cupboards are much easier and quicker to assemble and install
than home made cupboards. When I say home made I mean you have to
draw up your own cut list by specifying what the size of each part of the
cabinet will be, what side must be edged,how many pieces you want and
how many holes you want drilled in the melamine veneer or solid wood if any.
It's so easy to make a mistake if you don't have your own system in place
specially if you start drawing up cutlists for kitchens with 20 or more cabinets.
When I first started drawing up cutlist I always forgot 1 or 2 pieces of wood
but as I started getting use to it it started getting easier and easier and now
I can quote on bigger and more detailed jobs and make less mistakes on
them than I did on the simple cutlist on did when I started off.
A great program to build a kitchen business with is Microsoft excel because
you work with numbers so often. You can can make templates with all the
sizes of one cupboard + the sides of the pieces that must get edged and
when you draw up a cutlist you can just copy and paste the templates you
made into your cutlist. This will prevent you from making any typing errors like
typing a 6 instead of a 9. You laugh...but it happens so easily when you're
doing quotes till 2:00 am in the morning.
The great benefits of diy kitchen cupboards is you don't have to draw up any
cutlists, you can assemble the cabinets in no time and you don't have to
struggle lining up the drawers in the drawer cabinet or the shelves in the
floor cabinets. Everything is done for you. Even the holes for the hinges are
drilled in the side of the cabinet to fix the hinges onto the cabinet. The holes
for the cam and dowel which to assemble the cabinet are perfectly drilled to
effortlessly slide the pieces together and fix them with a single turn of a screw
driver. A groove is cut 16mm away from the back of the cabinet on the inside
of the 2 sides as well as the bottom and the top so that the backboard can
slide into it. Not only does that prevent water from getting to the backboard
when the walls get wet for any reason but it also forces the cabinet to be
square. The only problems you might encounter when buying diy kitchen
cupboards is that you might have to return a piece of the cabinet because
the holes they pre- drilled don't line up or my personal favorite "the groove
of the backboard was cut skew so the backing doesn't line up".
A Festool circular saw will make it easier to solve that problem.A Festool is
a real site tool, a must have for any kitchen contractor. Bigger companies
like Easylifekitchens don't allow you to fit their kitchens unless you have one.
The functions that makes it so unique is the straight aluminium guide it runs
on and the piece of rubber fitted to the end of the guide to prevent the
melamine from chipping when you cut it. You even get clamps to clamp the
guide down onto the piece of wood you're going to cut so that the guide
doesn't move while you're cutting.
Anyway back to the point . The bottom line is that if you use diy kitchen
cupboards you will save yourself both time and efford. If you're doing 4
kitchens a months you will be able to do between 6 and 8 with that system.
But remember that pre assemble flat packs are also more expensive so if
you're only doing 1 or 2 jobs a month you might want to stick with your own
system untill business picks up otherwise it might not be worth your while.
After all you're in it to make a profit as well.
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