I have seen the big DIY chain are now marketing their replacement door fronts, and have a sale on all of them at the moment.
I am under pressure from 'er indoors' to tart up the existing kitchen by replacing all the door fronts, drawer fronts and worktops, and fit a new sink. I have costed it out to be about £500 for all the parts and think this is very cheap.
However, I am always cautious about these things. For example, the drawers we currently have are 4 small drawers, but to make these new drawer fronts fit, I would need to do 1 small drawer and two deep drawers. This would mean messing about with the existing drawer carcusses and runners.
I am also wondering what else would be fiddly, what else would cause a problem, like replacing the worktops. In my experience, nothing is that easy. 'er indoors' seems to think it is a case of just popping off the existing drawers and putting the new ones on. She thinks it is very easy and can be done without any trouble.
I fitted new doors and drawer fronts when we moved into our new house.
I did find it slightly difficult as the holes for the new hinges differed from the old units. I got round this by making a template and drilling new holes into the old units for the new screws.
Also make sure that you buy new hinges as the old ones may have developed significant 'play' and will sag when fitted.
The new drawers also presented a problem as in one old unit there were 3 drawers and on the (B&Q) style we chose the 3-drawer option would not line up with the old drawers because of the size. I therefore fitted a drawer at the top and screwed a 2-drawer sized front to the remaining drawer sliders to create a deep drawer.
Another essential is that B&Q also sell a plastic graph template which is a godsend for drilling the holes for the new handles so they all line up the same.
To compliment the finish we also opted for new worktops - again from B&Q. Be careful though as B&Q delivered the worktops and they were damaged- collected and delivered new ones and they were damaged too!! Eventually received undamaged ones and fitted them myself.
Me indoors decided that I wanted new kitchen doors and worktop rather than fitting a whole new kitchen - the idea was to tart up our cheap old kitchen on a budget. We did actually get as far as looking at replacement doors, costing up etc. However, in the end we went for the entire brand new kitchen, on the grounds that new doors etc might make it look slighlty better but woulnd't improve the layout or give us extra storage space, which was what we actually wanted.
Interesting to see the reply you had from someone who had managed to successfully do this! I am about to let my place out, and in order to make it more attractive, want to 'tart up' the kitchen at as little expense as possible.
Have consulted a couple of kitchen cos. re: the possibility of having new doors (and oven, sink, worktop) rather than rip out the lot. It worked out only about £1,000 cheaper this way, as they said the carcasses were the least expensive element. One of the 2 companies was also very reluctant to do this, as they said the MDF of the old carcasses deteriorates over time, and the hinges will loosen and drop under the weight of new doors (or something to that effect!) Are they just trying to sell a whole new kitchen?! Interesting to see the reply to original post, from someone who has managed to successfully replace doors himself. He obviously solved the hinge dropping business too.
I am now considering taking my doors to a car respray place and getting them to give the wooden doors a re-spray!
We did it in our last but one house, we bought the doors from Ikea but like someone else has said the hinge holes were in the wrong place. For this we bought a hole cutter from B&Q (About £12) used it then took it back and got our money back.
Interesting to see the reply you had from someone who had managed to successfully do this! I am about to let my place out, and in order to make it more attractive, want to 'tart up' the kitchen at as little expense as possible.
Have consulted a couple of kitchen cos. re: the possibility of having new doors (and oven, sink, worktop) rather than rip out the lot. It worked out only about £1,000 cheaper this way, as they said the carcasses were the least expensive element. One of the 2 companies was also very reluctant to do this, as they said the MDF of the old carcasses deteriorates over time, and the hinges will loosen and drop under the weight of new doors (or something to that effect!) Are they just trying to sell a whole new kitchen?! Interesting to see the reply to original post, from someone who has managed to successfully replace doors himself. He obviously solved the hinge dropping business too.
I am now considering taking my doors to a car respray place and getting them to give the wooden doors a re-spray!
They are telling the truth, the carcasses are the cheapest bit of the kitchen. There isn't much, if any MDF in the units its mostly chipboard and hardboard, this can still swell
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