DIYbanter - View Single Post

wrote:
Hi

The wife and I (well...more the wife) are looking to replace the
kitchen and are looking at MFI and IKEA as potential suppliers. The MFI
kitchen looks good and has a good price, but I would like anyone's
thoughts before I take the plunge.

I recently put in my Ikea kitchen and can throw a few more thoughts into
the general pool:

Pros:

* (In my case) drove to Ikea on a Saturday morning - everything in
stock, ferried it all back home (had to make two trips with an estate
car) - job done in a day. No waiting for delivery, and there was not.
One. Single. Thing. Missing. In £1500 worth of wall and base units. I
was well impressed :-)
* Units are spacious and deep (but see cons...)
* Wall units available in 900mm heights (which I really wanted).
* Quality is good - sturdy base units made from good thick board, doors
and drawer fronts in solid wood (in some ranges).
* Fittings are good quality - good robust hinges, drawer runners are top
quality Blum and feel very nice.
* Finished appearance is fine as long as you take time and care to do
the assembly job properly.
* Decent range of sizes, options etc
* Prices are very good indeed IMHO, and they don't charge a fortune for
the little bits like legs, cornices, decor strips, plinths etc.

Cons:

* Base and wall carcasses are white only, can't colour match to doors
and drawer fronts.
* No space for pipework at the back, though pipes can be run easily in
the void under the units but that may mean more plumbing than you want.
* While quality is good, doors and drawer fronts feel a little
lightweight and insubstantial to me, though they have been robust so far.
* A bit basic and lacking in finesse - no soft closers, etc, though
another post leads me to suspect this may have changed recently.

A friend at work had a small kitchen supplied and installed recently by
MFI and the grief that he with supply (missing/wrong parts, delays,
fights with the store, arguments over costs) and fitting (fitters
walking off the job, late, taking longer than promised) made me value my
Ikea experience. (As far as I know it was just the purchase and
installation that was awful for him, the kitchen itself was fine.)
Admittedly I did a lot of the work on mine myself and didn't use
fitters, but it was painless and I am very happy with the result.

HTH

--
Tony