Has Kaboodle improved

Honestly, unless you have all the gear, and know how to cut melamine particleboard dead square and chip free I wouldn't bother making them yourself.
Plus the raw materials are so expensive at the moment, and the time / effort is just not worth it.

If you don't want Chinese made Kaboodle (with dubious Formaldehyde glue particleboard), you will find heaps of online Australian Made, using Formaldehyde free Australian Made particleboard flatpak suppliers.

The Kaboodle cabinets are fine, they are better than IKEA for two reasons,

1: They are standard size 720mm high, same as everyone else, IKEA has a unique size so they can sell you their unique sized doors.
2: They have solid 16mm backs, IKEA has those flimsy 3mm junk backs and that stupid bracket mounting system because they use the flimsy backs.

Everything else to do with Kaboodle is either junk, or a MASSIVE ripoff.

Their hinges are very ordinary quality (DTC Brand), and super expensive.
The corner hinges are the worst, I have seen so many failures of these the hinge gives way and the second door drops and wont close, the hinges are garbage, and most have broken within 2 years.

I replace them with BLUM hinges for half the price and made in Austria.

Their draw runners are rubbish especially the push to open, and Massively expensive

The only problem I have found with the carcasses is the legs are made from easily breakable plastic, other brands I have used have a lot more strength, and don't snap like the Kaboodle ones can if you move a carcass and the leg gets caught on something while doing it, I have had many broken, the plastic is too brittle.

Their vinyl wrap doors are terrible, there are two versions, the original ones from China off the shelf, these are shyte, they have wavy / bubbly look to them, almost like there was dust left on the MDF before they wrapped them, this looks terrible, especially in anything gloss, although the Antique white doesn't suffer from the problem. maybe the satin / matt finish hides the problem more.

There are the Australian made version which comes from Special orders, these are fine, just stay away from the off-the-shelf ones.

Below is how much of a ripoff the Kaboodle hardware is, they aught to be ashamed charging what they do, for the piss poor quality of the product.

They want $32 for ONE pair of soft close draw runners !!!! or $57 if you want a quality one !!!!

Or $19 for ONE, yes ONE pair of soft close hinge, this is disgusting price, for this rubbish.

Or wait for it, $30 if you want a quality pair of hinges.

You can walk off the street at Trademaster and get Austrian BLUM soft close for $5.17, add whatever hinge plate you require from 0.66c to $1.32, and that's retail pricing.
You can pick them up a lot cheaper again, if you have a trade account with suppliers.

Or you can buy soft close AHS which is still better quality than the Kaboodle ones, for $2.75 for the complete hinge retail

My only exposure to Kaboodle was installing a friend of a friends kitchen. Never again. The melamine was inconsistent/patchy, meaning one time the screws went in just right and further along they nearly pulled through.

Plus it did not help that the chap had the tops sitting on a concrete garage floor for nearly 9 months so they were severely bowed in each direction.

I did design and install 6 Masters ones. Great quality, made in AU by Haefele, I understand. You can order them through Home Hardware or Mitre 10 I believe. The last laundry I did that's how I ordered. But that was a while ago now.

I did the sums and found by the time I bought the materials and hinges etc. the flatpack was $15.00 dearer. Not worth the time and effort, and I have a panel saw.

Originally Posted by garfield

Thanks for the reply Metrix.

I had read through and saw that you had those grievances with the gloss doors and the hardware, they were from a while back so wasn't sure if theybhad improved at all since then but maybe not.

I have some gear here and was thinking of buying myself a new half decent table saw if I was going to tackle myself but was thinking of saving the time by looking at the Kaboodle flat packs.

I am going to measure all of the cabinetry I require and maybe work some sums out and get a rough idea of what it will cost me in sheets of melamine and edge banding, hinges etc and maybe get a few quotes for the cabinets to be made by a cabinet maker and see what the variance is. If it is not a heap more will probably go with the cabinets being made by a cabinet maker.

Thanks

Always happy to purchase new tools, a table saw is an invaluable tool, once you have one you will wonder how you did without it.

Don't waste money on a rubbish table saw, and don't waste it on a brand name unless it's DeWalt, forget the rest, the rack and pinion width adjustment is worth it's weight in gold.
It gives you what size you need every time, and take 5 seconds to get the adjustment spot-on and locked in, they also have enough power to cut almost anything.

I have owned and used many different brands, sold them all, and now have the DeWalt, I won't consider any other brand other than DeWalt for a small workshop / onsite saw.

Also note if you buy melamine sheets and want to edge band them, it takes a lot of time to edge band, gluing (either hot melt or wet glue), then trim then excess, and sand off the sharp edge.
The regular hot melt banding you buy to use with a domestic iron, is garbage, you really need a thick edge to protect the timber, you can't buy anything decent that will give yo ua decent edge, the propper stuff is applied with a purpose built (expensive) machine.

I have plenty of tools here from Table saws, to rail saws and everything in between, I hate making carcasses because they are too fiddly to get perfect, melamine particleboard is a horrible product to work with, once cut, the edges are like razor blades, you inevitably end up cutting your hands from these edges while handling the freshly cut pieces.

I only make carcasses if they are for vanities, which are normally made from black melamine, or if I need to do a few custom carcass for a job, anything decent such as a kitchen, I would just either get someone else to cut them, or flatpak it.

If you were talking about making the doors, then I would say yes, this is where you will save some decent money, for flat modern profile typically stained to keep the grain intact, I work with Baltic Birch ply, and edge band these in the same timber.

As with anything it's become so expensive nowadays and harder to source as most of it came from Russia, and they are somewhat pre-occupied trying to kill everyone else.

Stuffing around making carcasses without the proper tools, such as a panel saw, it's not going to save you much, unless you consider your time worth nothing.
And then you have to get rid of the offcuts, and there will be a shyte load when you have finished.

As I mentioned, the kaboodle carcass is ok, just stay away from their hardware, or do as Phil has suggested and get a cut to size service, the advantage of Kaboodle, is you can walk into any Bunnings and pick it up today, and have it all ready tomorrow to install.

Originally Posted by David.Elliott

My only exposure to Kaboodle was installing a friend of a friends kitchen. Never again. The melamine was inconsistent/patchy, meaning one time the screws went in just right and further along they nearly pulled through.

I haven't had that problem with any Kaboodle, must have assembled a few hundred of them

Originally Posted by David.Elliott

Plus it did not help that the chap had the tops sitting on a concrete garage floor for nearly 9 months so they were severely bowed in each direction.

That's not really a Kaboodle problem, any timber product stored incorrectly would experience issues.
I have had sheets of perfectly straight 17mm ply turn into a banana in a matter of a two weeks stored in the garage, due to all the crap weather.

I did have some Kaboodle from a client that were also stored in the back of the garage, the garage leaked and they got saturated.
They sat there for 18 months, the cockroaches eventually moved in because all the cardboard boxes went mushy and everything went mouldy.

Client was surprised when they were opened that they were no good
I was able to recover some of them, made 4 good ones from 8 that got wet, surprisingly 90% of the black mould just wiped off with a kitchen cleaner, but some of the carcasses were not usable, none of them bowed, just got massively mouldy and eventually damaged the melamine edges.

Originally Posted by David.Elliott

I did the sums and found by the time I bought the materials and hinges etc. the flatpack was $15.00 dearer. Not worth the time and effort, and I have a panel saw.

Exactly

Originally Posted by bootes

Any recommendations?

Not in Victoria Sorry, I have local guys in Sydney who I get from, they only supply Sydney.

Originally Posted by garfield

Looks nice and clean, I did the same here because it was only 5 carcass, doors are Birch coated in Porters products, very easy to look after.
Also did the same for the kitchenette downstairs, again it was only 6 carcass, Porters products on these as well,
Didn't bother making everything for the kitchen as it was 21 carcasses, and couldn't be bothered to make them all.

A few tips for your ones, make the pantry cover panel longer than the benchtop, as it looks strange the benchtop sticking past the panel.

For the upper cupboards, do away with handles, and make the doors 20mm longer for handle-less pull doors.

Put in LED strip lighting under the above cupboards, much nicer to work by than the overhead downlights.

Originally Posted by garfield

the Mrs waited far too long for it and I don't think she'd let me pull that apart to fix she'd be too scared it will take me another 12 months to put it back together

That's the exact reason why you don't make them yourself, if you can't dedicate the time to get it done, you lose interest and the job drags on, flatpack will take the tedious part of the job away, you can make the doors.

Originally Posted by garfield

I just priced up a kitchen with the cabinets I need with Trademaster that are located at Granville and the cabinets alone came in at $3200, and for the doors which are Polyurethane doors but working off their price list I'm not sure if the price on the table is for a set of doors for a double cabinet or if it is per unit, but working off the price was for a pair where needed the doors came in at just over 6K, so would basically be $10k for the cabinets and doors.

TradeMaster used to be good for kitchens, but they have become too expensive nowadays.

Originally Posted by garfield

Is it possible to get better quality hinges and drawer runners with the kaboodle stuff do you know? The thing I'd like about the Kaboodle flat pack is I can buy raw MDF doors cut to size and matched to suit their cabinets very cheap. A pair of double doors for a 600mm cabinet I can get for $40 for the pair, it wouldn't been be worth my while trying to make them for that, and I could basically prime them and paint them in Poly myself and save a heap of time and a heap of money.

Yes, you can purchase other brands such as BLUM, the drilling pattern on some hinges is slightly different, below are some of the different hinges I have here.

From left to right,

Salice (Italian Made)
DTC Kaboodle (Chinese made)
Hafele (Chinese Made)
BLUM IKEA (Austrian Made or used to be nowadays ?)
BLUM Corner cupboard (Austrian Made).

These are all pushed into the piece of white timber to give the same position relative to each other, notice the different hole mounting positions on the IKEA product (BLUM Inserta), even though these are a screw less design, they still need two diverts drilled to allow the hinge to sit flat, if you were to use these type of hinges, you would need to drill a different shallow hole to suit this type of hinge.

If you go for a regular screw on hinge, they should just fit straight on, (you would want to double check before committing to buy them in bulk).

Originally Posted by Forrestmount

Hafele is actually German made if you buy from the distributor and not the big green shed


o

They are also made in Italy

Originally Posted by minidriver

this thread is perfectly timed. am in the same situation. armed with a tracksaw and a strong desire to buy a table saw, am contemplating making my own kitchen cabinets.

Reasons to DIY:
- build carcasses from birch ply vs particle board/mdf. Our existing cabinets show a lot of moisture damage (unsure of age, possible 10-15yo.
- make it not look like a flatpack kitchen - some weird sizes involved - deeper upper cabinets, some 500mm wide cabinets, so some cabinets will need to be custom made anyway.
- i really quite like the exposed plywood look.
- $ for $, get a better product if all goes to plan

Reasons to not DIY:
- ability (or lack thereof)
- time
- energy
- a lot more planning involved
- might not go to plan
- dry storage of sheet stock/cut pieces/built cabinets prior to install


So anyway, I'm charging ahead at a slow pace. I've designed a heap of parametric cabinets in fusion 360 which are totally customisable via parameters - ie you can set cabinet W, D, H, panel thickness, door thickness, top/edge reveal around door etc etc. If anyone would be keen on them I am happy to share. This makes it easy to work out cut sheets also as you can pull dimensions of each piece easily.

So the next step it to work out the cutsheet. For this I'm using a program called MaxCut, which optimises all your pieces onto sheet stock, which should make the cutting stage a little bit less tedious.

The next thing to think about is how are you going to assemble the cabinets? Dominos? Screw and glue? pocket screws? do you have/need jigs to hold things square?

Anyway, food for thought!

As with most DIY warriors, you are overthinking it, building carcasses be it standard or custom sized is entry level carpentry.

Like anything, once you start to overthink it you just complicate a simple task and turn a job that should take you a week, into one that drags out for six months (I have seen this happen on many occasions) and costs four times as much.

Materials
Birch ply is not the most economical alternative to build carcasses from at the moment, not that it ever was an economical option.

Currently it's super expense because most of it came from Russia, and now it doesn't !! so there's something to look at changing unless you want to spend mega money on something you are not going to see.

Cheapest regular grade 18mm Birch is around $154 a sheet retail, if you don't know where to buy from expect to be quoted around $270 a sheet !!!!! as opposed to white melamine $50, or black melamine around $55.

Construction
Regular screws are more than enough to build any carcass, you can pocket hole if you like, but it's an un necessary step and time consuming for no benefit, and a pain in the butt to pocket hole melamine because it's too slippery.

Add to that it's a structurally inferior connection method compared to through hole construction for particleboard.

Overkill joinery
Domino construction, I wouldn't bother, you don't need tenon joinery for simple carcasses, it will add no benefit to construct them this way.
I have a domino and would never consider using it to build basic kitchen carcasses.

Plus you need to add the cost of the machine / dominos, machine cost either $1850 or $2599.
If you won't use the machine all the time after that, it's just wasted money.

There are plenty of other proven strong methods of building simple butt joined boxes.

Flat Pak look
Just because the carcasses are made from melamine or are standard size doesn't automatically mean they are flatpack, simply making a carcass a different depth does not make it not look like a flatpack, you can get carcasses made in any width / depth you need at any joinery shop, the good ones will also pre drill and not assemble so it's basically custom flatpack, this is normal service.

Plywood carcasses
Plywood may offer you some additional protection, if your kitchen is designed / built / installed badly it can leak water, doesn't matter what the carcasses are constructed from they will get water damaged.

If you choose exposed ply look, you will need to seal the exposed timber, which is another expense and time consuming job.

The below jigs are helpful for getting things square, I have these, they can be a little fiddly, but do help to keep things square.

Originally Posted by TINSHED

I have used Kaboodle several times and found them excellent, no broken feet, hinges or drawer slides I have used 900 drawers that hold a lot of heavy crockery. I don't have soft close hinges as I didn't feel they were necessary for the extra cost. You don't have to use their hardware so suggest shopping around, Trademaster looks like a good tip, I also use Elraco which is an online store. Having the Bunnings name behind Kaboodle is good insurance if needed as on one occasion when we had a couple of doors discolour, Bunnings replaced and installed every panel without charge, plus a smile

shouldn't it be more concerning you've had a couple of doors discolour?

I,m back .I recently did an exercise for a customer for costing using my flat pack kitchens and kaboodle from bunnings ,bunnings were $15,672 and kitchen in a box was $13,789 , bunnings were cheap when they first promoted the kaboodle range but have been slowly and steadily raising their prices for the product over the years so they are now that they have gotten the cheaper mentality out there they are now close to what a noemal kitchen would be worth.

Originally Posted by arms

I,m back .I recently did an exercise for a customer for costing using my flat pack kitchens and kaboodle from bunnings ,bunnings were $15,672 and kitchen in a box was $13,789 , bunnings were cheap when they first promoted the kaboodle range but have been slowly and steadily raising their prices for the product over the years so they are now that they have gotten the cheaper mentality out there they are now close to what a noemal kitchen would be worth.

I suspected that was indeed the case. Nice to se it confirmed by someone in the know.. Thanks Tom.

Originally Posted by arms

I,m back .I recently did an exercise for a customer for costing using my flat pack kitchens and kaboodle from bunnings ,bunnings were $15,672 and kitchen in a box was $13,789 , bunnings were cheap when they first promoted the kaboodle range but have been slowly and steadily raising their prices for the product over the years so they are now that they have gotten the cheaper mentality out there they are now close to what a noemal kitchen would be worth.

Hi Tom,

Your website has a useability issue.

When you go to the shop, you are presented with the below screen, it's basically impossible to see the categories with the blue text on the bluey / green background.
As this is the most important part of the website, I might suggest to change the layout / colours so the products can be selected a lot easier.

Also there are a number of links that just go to a black white page.
Then there are errors coming up ?

I think there are some issues going on with whoever is hosting the website.