Thanks all for your patience and for not deleting me! I will make time for Ciao, I WILL make time f...
Thanks all for your patience and for not deleting me! I will make time for Ciao, I WILL make time for Ciao . . . . . . . . . . . . . .(repeats and repeats) !
Member since:08.03.2005
Reviews:9
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This review deals with the delivery and installation of Hygenakitchen units (Hudson design) purchased from the MFI showroom in Swindon. For details of reasons for choosing this kitchen, my experience of buying from the Swindon showroom and costs, please refer to my previous review, The MFI Kitchen Experience. The price quoted at the end of this review included a sink, tap and glass cooker extractor hood, as well as the cupboard units.
This is by necessity a lengthy review and I apologise for this, but hope that it will be of some help to anyone considering buying a flat-pack kitchen from MFI.
I have set this out under these headings: Prior to Delivery: Delivery of the Units: Assembling the Units: Fitting the Units into your Kitchen (Base Units and Wall Units): Finishing Details and Summary. Hopefully you may easily find the section that interests you the most without the need to read through the whole review.
PRIOR TO DELIVERY:
Shortly after our order had been processed, we received a letter from MFI outlining the delivery details as follows:
We should call their delivery information line two days before the delivery date to find out if the delivery would be morning or afternoon.
They advised us to clear a space in our home, as 'the furniture would probably take up more space than you think'. The space would need to be dry and damp free.
The letter asked us to allow time on the day of delivery to check the order with the Driver. It went on to explain how the various items would be organised and counted. The Driver should report any discrepancies or issues with the delivery to the Customer Service Department before he left our home.
The Driver would leave a detailed checklist and we could contact Customer Services if necessary. Discrepancies must be reported within 72 hours of delivery and damage or quality issues within 14 days of delivery.
The letter also warned that if we failed to report damage and delivery errors within the allocated time, they would be happy to help but a charge might be incurred.
The letter concludes with this statement:
'Our people are trained to look after you and take pride in resolving most issues personally. Our Customer Charter is designed to make your purchase a great experience and offer you peace of mind. Only your total satisfaction will do because we want you to be an MFI customer for life.'
In the meantime, I received a telephone call from MFI advising that the tap that we had ordered would not be available for delivery with the rest of the units, would be delivered two weeks later and a date was given. This was not a problem for us, as there was a great deal of work to be done long before the tap was needed. The tap eventually arrived exactly on the date that had been promised.
In the event, we did not need to telephone MFI as they telephoned us to confirm the delivery time of the kitchen units.
DELIVERY OF THE UNITS
The
delivery arrived at 8am on the due date. We had cleared our garage to accommodate all the boxes and had covered the garage floor with waterproof sheets as an extra precaution against any possible ingress by damp.
A daunting number of boxes gradually filled the garage space - ninety-five in all! Some of these were large, the one containing the glass cooker hood for example, and some were small, such as individually packed drawer fronts. There was also a large plastic bag containing miscellaneous fittings and a box containing the handles. Considering the number of boxes involved, delivery time was fairly quick and took only about fifteen minutes. This was because the units were well organised and checking the items with the driver could not have been easier.
The driver explained that the boxes were colour coded and this was also outlined in the assembly and installation guide that accompanied the units.
Identifying the boxes was relatively easy. Base unit cartons were printed in red ink, wall units were printed in blue ink, tower units in purple ink and all doors and ancillary items were printed in black ink. The cartons were stacked together according to their colour code. There was also a delivery note that gave a breakdown of the units bought, and descriptions and code numbers would match those on the boxes. In practise this meant that it was easy to find and identify the correct boxes required to assemble the units.
At this point I should mention that it would have been impossible to open and check the contents of all the boxes in order to comply with the returns instructions as per the letter received. We could not begin to take the old kitchen apart until the new units had been received, and it would require several weeks' work to be completed before all the boxes would be used and the contents inspected.
Eventually, we did find one damaged door and had to return this. Although this was some time after the original delivery, this was replaced by MFI without any problem. Similarly, we needed to change a cupboard door because of a slight change in our design that came about during installation. Again, this was weeks after the original delivery, but the change was made without any problem.
We also decided to order an extra cupboard at a later date, and although the original sale had finished, we were given the 20% discount on this cupboard that had applied to our original order.
ASSEMBLING THE UNITS
The installation guide gave a list of the tools required in order to assemble and install the kitchen units. You would be well advised to read this guide thoroughly before making any attempt to assemble and install your kitchen units, to identify the components and have the required tools ready.
We also had the advice of a professional kitchen fitter who advised that all dowels and the back panels of cupboards should be glued into place for extra strength. This was not advised in the instructions, and PVA glue was provided only for drawer assembly. We bought PVA glue separately and specifically for carcass assembly.
We found that it was necessary to pay attention to the plans in great detail, as it was important to count the pre-drilled holes to make sure dowels were inserted into the correct holes. Misreading or miscounting would lead to incorrect assembly. A set of instructions comes with each unit and is basically the same, so once you have constructed one cupboard, the next will be very similar, even though it may be a different size.
The plans were not difficult to follow providing you studied them carefully before attempting to assemble a unit. These were relatively easy to construct, particularly after one unit had been made and some experience gained. Any mistakes that we made were usually because we had not counted holes correctly.
Pullout Larder Unit:
The unit that we had the most difficulty with was the pullout larder unit. The instructions for this were difficult to read, as they were photocopied and of poor quality. The metal frame for this needed to be fixed to the inside of the larder unit doors. We joined the two doors together by means of a metal bracket in order to make one large door.
The combined doors and the attached larder unit would then pull out from the carcass to give easy access to the metal baskets of the unit. However, there was no template provided and no measurements given to fit the larder unit to the doors. The doors needed to be aligned with a second unit that was to stand alongside the larder unit and we were only able to do this by trial and error and by our own innovation. The doors still do not line up precisely with the adjacent doors (see photo no. 1 below) and we may yet spend more time rectifying this. This is one area where the assembly was badly let down by a poor set of instructions. The top of the larder door does not fit snugly against the top of the carcass when the larder unit is pushed in (see photo no. 2) and we need to spend more time making adjustments to this.
FITTING THE UNITS INTO THE KITCHEN
Apart from the individual assembly plans, the assembly and installation guide shows you how to install the units into your kitchen, how to fit and adjust the doors and drawers, and how to fit other accessories, such as pelmets, cornices and gallery rails. We found this guide to be invaluable and mostly easy to follow.
Base Units:
The base units were not too difficult to fit, and levelling was by way of adjustable legs. Because our particular kitchen presented it's own unique problems, I would not go so far as to say it was plain sailing, and we did encounter problems, but this was more the fault of crooked walls and corners that are not square, rather than any fault of the units themselves.
Our kitchen required corner base units to be installed in two of the corners. These consisted of units with an 'open side.' The unit completing
Pictures of MFI Flatpack Kitchens
Photo 1 - alignment of larder door with next unit
the L shape required to make up the corner unit would cover this open side. The drawback to this system is that once the units are in place there is a gap between the 'open side' (which you can no longer see) and the side of the next unit that completes the corner. This is because the units do not butt up against each other in order to allow room for a corner filling-strip. Once items are placed inside the finished cupboard at this far end, it would be easy for items to fall out and onto the floor between the units. You would not be able to see or retrieve the items should this happen. We therefore made up our own sides to these two units to prevent this happening. Once the base carcasses were all in place, it was time for the measurements to be taken for the worktops. This was where another problem became apparent. The sides of the cupboards and the top rails did not always have flush alignments. The measurements for the pre-drilled holes to accommodate the cams and cam studs was inexact, so that when joining the panels together they were not level, and this caused a slight 'step' in the finished top of the base unit (see photo no. 3 below). The fitter for the granite worktop advised us that the tops of the side panels where they met the top horizontal rails should be continuous without steps. There should be no gaps, however slight, between the base of the granite worktops and the tops of the units.
The only way to overcome this was to use a belt-sander to sand these 'steps' down so that the whole of the top rail of the base units was flush and level with the tops of the side panels. This was not difficult, but was an instance of extra time needed in order to correct the result of imprecise hole alignment at the manufacturing stage of production.
Wall Units:
We abandoned the system that was provided to hang and fix the wall units to the wall. We found that there was not enough adjustment on the hanging brackets to allow for precise alignment with adjacent cupboards and we wasted a great deal of time trying to get this system to work. Eventually, we screwed the units directly to the wall by means of battons that we fixed across the back of the units and found this to be a more solid and reliable method of fixing the wall units. However, this took a great deal of extra time and should not have been necessary.
The same problem was present with the wall units as with the base units, in that joints do not align (see photo no. 4 below). However, with the wall units this does not present a real problem since cupboard doors and cornices cover these joints.
FINISHING DETAILS
Aligning the drawer fronts with the cupboard doors proved to be difficult and time consuming. Sometimes the drawers did not run smoothly in the drawer runners and we could not always find an obvious reason for this. On one occasion we swapped one set of drawer runners for another, to find that the drawer ran perfectly in the new runners, but there seemed to be no obvious reason for this. Aligning the drawers was a matter of trial and error and may have been in part down to our inexperience with this.
Aligning cupboard doors was also time-consuming but I would guess the system used is universal to most kitchen manufacturers and would be equally challenging regardless of the make of kitchen.
Last of all, the cornices were fitted to the tops and bottoms of the wall cupboards. These did not present any real problem, but required precise measurements and angles to be cut.
At the time of writing, the kitchen is incomplete as we are in the process of laying the new floor. This means that we have yet to fit the pelmets around the bottom of the cupboards, but I can foresee no particular problems regarding this. I will update when this has been completed if any problems become apparent.
SUMMARY
Delivery was on time and efficient. We had no problems when dealing with MFI after delivery for exchanges and extra orders. In fact, they could not have been more helpful.
The cupboards were not difficult to assemble, but problems were encountered when fitting into the kitchen. I would like to think that more expensive units would not present these problems, and assume that this is one of the pitfalls of buying cheaper units. These problems were not difficult to overcome, just time consuming.
The larder unit was difficult to assemble because of the lack of clear assembly instructions, and we still need to make adjustments to this.
The Hudson is a middle range kitchen from MFI, therefore not the cheapest you can buy, and by no means the most expensive. I would say that it does offer value for money and I am pleased with the (almost) finished result. The design is exactly the look I wanted, giving smooth, clean lines and combined with the granite and natural stonewall tiles has provided us with the overall look that we envisaged.
I would recommend this kitchen from MFI, but would say that you should not consider fitting kitchen units yourself unless you have a reasonable amount of DIY experience. This is a job best left to the professionals, but in our case I believe we saved at least £2,000 by fitting the units ourselves, although we did get professionals in to do plastering, plumbing and electrical work. What it did cost us was our time and some frustration with problems that needed to be solved, but doubtless some of this was down to our own inexperience in taking on a large task such as this. Doing the work ourselves also meant that we did not need to vacate the house while the kitchen was taken apart and re-assembled!
Should you decide to install a kitchen yourself, I would say time and patience are great assets to have!
Once again, my apologies for the length of this review, but I hope it may be of some help to anyone considering installing flat-pack kitchen units from MFI.
Brilliant review well done for the diamond :) I have tried flat packs so many times, and i think i always get the ones with missing bits. Either that or I'm just onats at puttingthings together!
susie191 20.01.2006 13:29
Fabulous review and worthy of your sparkler! I would never attempt this in a million years, my diy skills are non existent. We have just had a new kitchen fitted, all I had to do was leave the man to it. He did a great job! Susie
n13roy 15.01.2006 13:49
Well you said it was a long review, and you certainly weren't joking, but a very interesting read indeed. Some good and useful advice in there for anyone thinking about a D.I.Y. fitted kitchen.........Roy....
Advantages: new kitchen; Relatively cheap; Good quality; Excellent planning service Disadvantages: Flooring and tiling only available on an ad hoc basis
AnitaM 15.05.2004 (15.05.2004)
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Nov 28th, 2005
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