to renovate or revamp?
Ryan from Next Edition Kitchens talks kitchen revamps thcheapest
Replacing cabinet doors would seem like a quick, affordable solution to all your kitchen woes. However, cabinetmaker Ryan Bourke says a simple makeover may not be all it’s cracked up to be.
A kitchen re-face is a common request when people come into Mr Bourke’s Kioreroa Road factory and showroom, Next Edition Kitchens.
“I hear people saying, ‘the kitchen’s in good nick, we just want to change the colour’. This can work really well in kitchens that have been done well to start with, but after they’re about five years old things start wearing down.”
Once a kitchen is more than seven years old, Mr Bourke says you can just about forget about replacing the doors.
“The hardware is too dated to be putting money and time into new doors,” he says. “It gets to a stage where you’re just throwing money at a temporary solution.”
To put money into new doors and not replace hardware would significantly shorten the life of your kitchen.
“In reality, the doors and hardware are the most expensive parts of a cabinet so to do the whole lot is not as expensive as people imagine.”
Mr Bourke says when a kitchen is done right to start with, customers tend to just want to freshen things up a bit.
“They like the layout and think that a new kitchen will spoil this, or be out of their price bracket,” says the cabinetmaker of more than a decade.
The front of a cabinet is made up of the main door part and ‘edge tape’ in a matching colour. These colours go in and out of fashion and fade over time. So when replacing one part of what is essentially a unit, it is unlikely to get a perfect matching colour. You may not be entirely happy with the overall result.
That’s not to say that replacing doors can’t be done. Anne and Errol Morris recently replaced the doors in their kitchen in Kamo.
“We could not have been happier with the result,” say the couple.
And the transformation speaks for itself!
For more information about how to revamp a tired kitchen visit www.nexteditionkitchens.com.