kitchen , to build or not to build.

[robgil]

ive been looking a lot at kitchens lately but i have been unable to find one i like that doesn't cost a fortune. i have also looked at Victorian pine dresser bases as an option (i only need a run of 2.5 meters or so) but i cant find one long enough and if i did i would then have to fit a belfast sink into it somehow , probably with the help of a kitchen worktop placed ontop of the dresser.
what i am looking for is a well made pine unit , stand alone type with drawers over cupboards , not much to ask but really difficult to find. especially one that hasn't been touched by the hand of the ever popular ''shabby chic'' monster.

so , i have decided to build my own. :shock: has anyone ever built a kitchen before? am i doomed to fail? or is it surprisingly easy?

 

[JoceAndChris]

How marvellously brave.

My Dad built an oak kitchen and became a cabinet maker when he was 50+ - if he can do it... So, are you going for entirely free-standing kitchen then? That's what I'd do - have the sinky bit built and then pick up sideboards, dressers, table chairs in antique/junk shops and paint them all the same colour- that's got to be loads cheaper than any built in kitchen.

Round here you'd get the sink unit made to your spec for well under £1000, if you didn't want to DIY.

 

[robgil]

thats the thing joce i dont want to paint it, i just want a natural kind of antique pine free standing kitchen , the kind that doesn't greet you with white plastic covered chip board when you open a cupboard door.
i will need to learn a few things first though , dovetail joints for instance cant be easy to do properly.

i did enquire about some of these bespoke kitchen builders and to be fair for the money they ask ive seen very few good quality jobs. one particular kitchen builder sent me some pics of his/her work and i was amazed at how bad it was in relation to how much money they were asking.

 

[Lime]

Making kitchen furniture is easier and cheaper than a couple of decades ago.
There is a gadget/tool for nearly anything now.
I have attempted to make kitchen furniture (some time ago) to minimise expense and the difficult shape of the room precluded purchasing ready-made.
The most difficult thing to make IME is a square cupboard that looks good next to a not-square wall!
Don't hurry yourself, take your time and try your best.
You may be surprised at what you can achieve.

 

[chuckey]

Its very time consuming to make 12 cupboard doors and 6 drawers (fronts) that are panelled. I would trawl around all the usual suspect big shed places to locate the doors and drawer fronts. They can sell them individuley (except for Magnet). The carcasses can be made from what ever you fancy, ply with a good surface, melamine surfaced chipboard, pine planking etc. The problem is getting decent wood , the big sheds don't sell it. don't use acylic varnish its brittle and flakes use proper polyurathane it gives a smooth very hardwearing surface.
The actual worksurface(s) need to be 30mm + in thickness with a top surface of at least 10mm of your facing material. I would build it up from lengths of douglas fir (or piranha pine it I could afford it) say 1 1/2" thick. I would then glue the planks edge to edge, so its like a butchers block, by drilling a 10mm hole every 24" along its length, through its width, then use 8mm stainless steel studding with nuts to clamp it all up while the waterproof glue is drying. Fit some edging with the back of it relieved for the nuts and washers. This way if you get the grain running in alternate directions the top should remain flat. Also when is the last time you have seen a 600mm wide X 30mm plank?.
Frank

 

[robgil]

the work surface should be a doddle i reckon, i have considered using bolts as you described to hold the planks together.
this is pretty much what i want to make except with a sink in it at one end instead of a drawer. as you can see the drawers are dovetailed and the doors sit within the framework.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=300330080702
the panels in the doors will hopefully be made up of tongue and groove/floor boards type planks?

the only difficult bits that will require some skill and practice will be the dovetails , i also want to mortice and tenon it together held fast with seasoned pegs and a drop of glue just to be sure to be sure.

 

[benmc]

This is something I am also having real difficulty with. I am loathed to pay around £10k for just units and find they are made from chipboard.

Here are some pointers

Neptune Kitchens - Ply Cabinets and Solid wood doors etc. http://www.neptune.co.uk/ Look very nice
Piggeries Pine - Solid pine kitchens - http://www.piggeriespine.co.uk/gallery.php?gcat=3 Made a nice bed box for us. All handmade
World of Old - Solid reclaimed wood. More rustic - http://www.aworldofold.co.uk/Gallery/2

Hope this helps

Ben

 

[skier-hughes]

The work surface is the only thing my father in law (carpenter and joiner) said would be best to have made by the timber suppliers, as the length of ours (5m) coupled with the thickness & width and that it takes a fair bit to get it properly glued together so it doesn't warp/cup/shrink probably means it isn't the easiest of jobs to do well.

 

[rebeccac]

It may not be your thing but have you considered making a brick or concrete block structure then plastering it ?

You can use old old doors from junk/ salvage yards all different sizes and the top why not old sealed quarry tiles or some nice oak cut to size and sealed ?

 

[Penners]

It's quite easy to make a pastiche "shaker" style painted door, using MDF.

Cut two rectangles of 9mm MDF to the required size of your door. Now cut out the centre of one of the rectangles so that it becomes a frame - I reckon a frame width of about 90mm looks about right.

If you wish to do so, you can mould the inside edge of the frame with a router, although I prefer to leave all edges square (but well sanded). If you do mould the inside edges of the frame, your router moulding will, of course, have telltale rounded corners (that I personally dislike).

Plant the frame on top of the solid panel, gluing and screwing from behind. Make sure your screwholes are well countersunk, so that the screw heads are below the surface. Fill over the top of the screwheads with two-pack, cross-linked filler, and sand flush.

Sand the outside edges so that any size discrepancies between the panel and the frame disappear. You can now mould the outside edge if you wish, or leave it square. Now paint.

If you want to create an unpainted door, you can use this same technique with laminated pine panels, but it will be a fair bit more expensive and will waste a sizeable rectangle of pine in every case. You'll also need to decide whether you're happy seeing screwheads on the back of the door, or whether it might be better to glue and cramp each make-up without screws.

To avoid the wastage of cutting the frame from a solid pine panel, you could of course create the frame out of ex-100mm pine boards, dowelled together at the corners.

 

[chuckey]

Looking at that victorian unit, reminded me. I am tall (6'2") wifey is also fairly tall so I built my units to 950mm height - standard is 900mm. trouble is I can't measure one because all mine are high.
With one of those deep sinks the bottom of the washing up bowl is also very low. I would have a practise with a washing up bowl sitting at a comfortable height for washing up before you commit your self. remember the current spec is too low for 95% of the current population and we are a lot taller then Victorian folk.
Frank

 

[robgil]

thanks guys , lots of ideas to think about there. this is the space i am trying to do it in and the lovely period kitchen i am trying to replace, its not big at all and i dont think i will be using any wall cupboards , perhaps a plate rack but not much else.the wall facing the window will hopefully have a long (4ft) butchers block so i dont need to worry about that wall. i am going to price up tools and timber roughly to give me an idea of cost as the floor , heating, roof and bathroom all have to go in before the kitchen.
would antique/reclaimed pine be easy to source for a project like this? i am not sure if new , soft pine would be up to the job as a hard wearing kitchen. would kiln dried oak be a better material to use? i would like to use a timber that is sustainable ,could i build a kitchen out of laylandii perhaps or is that pushing things a bit too far?

 

[Ian Bond]

I've used this company for oak supplies, and they've been helpful.

http://www.britishhardwoods.co.uk/worktops/types-and-prices.php

John Plowright at Eden Garden Antiques is a good source of reclaimed timber. They've supplied me with pitch pine T&G bead and butt for a wall panelling job. I'm currently using the left over boards to panel around a bath, but you could use it to make cupboard doors, or end panels for kitchen units etc.

http://www.demolitions.co.uk/index.html

 

[Lime]

How familiar those pictures are.
I can almost smell the room too.
Hate the ceiling.
Apart from the furnishings I'd concentrate on a nice floor and good ventilation.

As for sinks, I had a new kitchen built 3 years ago complete with a modern white ceramic double sink, one of which was deep.
My wife chose it and loved it.
I hated it.
Every time I used it I would start swearing at one of the many shortfalls it suffered, one of which was the depth and shape of the sink.
I ripped it out just after last Christmas and replaced it with a pair of left and righthand standard stainless steel sinks.
Anything was better than what we had.
The choice of sinks today is rather sad compared to 40 years ago.
Some are so small that a dinner plate might get jammed in it.
I also remember from childhood the crud that accumulated under the wooden draining board edge where it met the old style ceramic sink... not for me either.

 

[Flyfisher]

My wife chose it and loved it. I hated it. . . . . . I ripped it out just after last Christmas.

Now there's a brave man. Is your wife still talking to you? :wink:

I suspect kitchen sinks are less important these days with the advent of dishwashers, which gives designers more scope for fancy design over raw functionality.

 

[MattW]

Have you seen this listed on SalvoWeb currently? http://www.salvo.co.uk/images/userimgs/37185/46837_1.jpg

FOR SALE : THIS IS AN UNUSUALLY LARGE VICTORIAN CABINET
This is an unusually large Victorian painted cabinet, the size of which can not really be appreciated from the photographs.
The interior is in especially good condition

Dimensions
Height 48" (122cm)
Width 102" (260cm)
Depth 27 1/2" (70cm)

Contact : Loran and Co., Somerset, UK. Tel: 01225 447277.
Enquiries : Send a message
Web : http://www.loranandco.co.uk
Price : £1250.00

I suspect that posting an advert isn't allowed on here - however it isn't mine, and seems just what the OP was looking for, so forgive me!

 

[Moo]

I suspect kitchen sinks are less important these days with the advent of dishwashers, which gives designers more scope for fancy design over raw functionality.

Which is daft, because the sink gets used for things that are too big to fit into the dishwasher.

I'm fed up with my kitchen sink, too. It claimed to be 'stain resistant', but my family were able to overcome that resistance almost from day one.
Does anyone know where I can get a double-drainer stainless steel sink big enough to soak an oven-rack in?

 

[Cloudscape]

Catering sinks (in stainless steel) are available with larger bowl sizes (and larger price tags, sadly). Secondhand is an option.

 

[Moo]

Where should I look (in the yellow pages?) for purveyors of such sinks?

 

[Flyfisher]

Which is daft, because the sink gets used for things that are too big to fit into the dishwasher.

Absolutely. One sometimes wonders if designers ever actually use the items they design.
I suppose there's always the bath for the really big stuff.

Google can find lots of industrial/commercial/catering sinks:
http://www.alcoeng.co.uk/StainlessTables.html?gclid=CMOIkNbh8ZsCFZwA4wod9wHd-w
http://www.cateringsinks.co.uk/?gclid=CLDow_nh8ZsCFZ0U4wodG1b7_w
Etc