Lessons in D.I.Y.

I ordered a kitchen to be built. The kitchen-body (carcass) was a separate order from the kitchen-top. The flat-pack for the kitchen-body came. The workers didn't. So I had to build it. Yay!

● Planning

Kitchen = Body + Top

When you order your kitchen, the carcass/ body of the kitchen is a separate order from the kitchen-top. They come from different manufacturers. Once the body is completed, the kitchen-top supplier will need to check & re-measure the finished body.

Body = Structure + Facades + Handles

The carcass/ body comprises the structure, the facades and the handles. The facades refer to the visible/ presentable parts like the front and sides... Basically the superficial parts. The structure is usually made of MDF (medium-density fibreboard) which is glued on all sides with a mica laminate (usually white).

Keep it simple.

For the layout design, keep things as simple as possible. Shelves with swing-hinge doors are easy to build. Drawers take a bit more work. Try not to mix having drawers and shelves in the same module block because that's doing the work of both. Luckily, nearly all the difficult parts like cutaways will be on the kitchen-top anyway. Those guys know what to do.

Stick to standard widths.

Where possible, order standard widths. Different manufacturers have different standard module widths. Popular widths are 1,000mm (1 metre), 900mm (3 ft), 600mm (2 ft) and 500mm (½ metre). In general, cupboards with shelves are available in a few different widths whereas drawer units are only available in a fixed width. If you absolutely have to order a custom (non-standard) width, then order that unit as cupboard with shelves as these are easier to cut to your required width.

Sort out your electrical plug-points beforehand. Or plumbing etc.

Hopefully, you will have time to do this before you start assembly & installation. I didn't & my solution was to cut out holes at the back of the cupboard to access the electrical power points.

Give yourself space to work.

You will need some free space to work. Moving all the flatpacks is probably inevitable but you want to minimise that. In general you will probably build in the order of whatever is easiest. In my case it was short cupboards, then wall cupboards and then tall cupboards. So basically, you will want to stack up the boxes sequentially with the first-to-be-built placed on top and last-to-be-built at the bottom.

● General

Be careful with the facades.

The facades are what people will see. The facade-boards usually have an expensive wrap-around laminate. I chose a high-gloss white facade. Maybe not so obvious but the facade-boards have one side with a standard laminate... That is the side you are meant to drill & screw into. What people can't see, nobody cares much. Keep all your messy bits inside the structure, out of sight.

Some screw-heads need to be screwed until flushed with the laminate surface.

Typically for the sides of a cupboard, the side-facades will eventually need to be screwed onto the side-structure. At the plane where they join, if you haven't screwed in flushed to the laminate, there would be a small gap. This may not be so noticeable of the gap is only 1mm. If you've been screwing manually unassisted, this is quite difficult to achieve so use an electric-screwdriver as much as you can.

Electric-Screwdriver

There is a bit of technique to electric-screwdriving which is really in 2 parts: (1) Get the screw spinning at speed, and (2) your push to drive the screw in. Electric-screwdrivers operate at lower speeds (but higher gearing) than electric-drills so you can have a bit more control over the screw depth. I was using an electric-drill with the screwdriver-head and so I had to have really fast reflexes to control the screws. Electric-drills don't have the low-gear force like electric-screwdrivers so I did end up with some burring of the screw-heads (and the screwdriver-head).

Electric-Drill

Stick to using only a few drill-heads. I used 4.5mm drill-bit to make holes where the screws go through easily. I used 3mm drill-bit to make holes where the screws need to grip and hold. As it turns out, the 4.5mm drill-bit was specified for making holes for door-handles too.

Electric-Jigsaw

The standard blades which come with an electric-jigsaw are inappropriate for work with laminated MDF. The standard blades will saw upwards and splinter the laminate surface. The blades labelled as "wood" do the most damage like 2-3mm of splintering while the blades labelled as "metal" do less damage but are slower. Ironically, flipping the laminated MDF over and the "wrong side" looks quite well cut. You need to hunt for a reversed-blade from some DIY shop because this will saw in a downwards direction. I didn't have a reversed-blade and settled for using the "metal" blade (for cutting metal).