Builder Wardrobes and Kitchens: Keep, Modify or Replace?

Most families decide in the first ten minutes after handover. Usually by looking at the shutters.

The shutters are the least important part.

A wardrobe with tired shutters and a sound carcass can be saved. A wardrobe with beautiful shutters and shelves sized for nothing will frustrate you every morning for ten years.

The 15-minute inspection

The board

• Look at the exposed edges. Swelling or crumbling means moisture got in.
• Press near the screws. They should hold firm, not wobble in a widened hole.
• Check any unit on a wet wall — behind the sink, next to a bathroom.

Here's why the board underneath matters more than the finish on top.

The hardware

• Open every shutter. Does it sag, rub or bounce back?
• Pull every drawer fully out. Does it come all the way, and close softly?

The layout

• How much is hanging, how much is shelving — and does that match what you own?
• Is there a loft nobody can reach without a ladder?
• In the kitchen: where are the spices relative to the burner? Is there a larder at all?

Keep, modify or replace

• Keep — sound board, smooth hardware, a layout that fits your inventory. Rare, but it happens. Don't spend money you don't need to.
• Modify — sound carcass, wrong inside. The most common case. Redesign the internals: drawers instead of deep shelves, a pull-down rail for the top zone, a shoe pull-out, a jewellery drawer. New shutters and hardware if needed.
• Replace — swollen board, a carcass out of square, or a layout so wrong that modifying it costs nearly as much as starting over.

Modifying keeps your walls, tiles and plumbing untouched. That alone saves weeks.

Kitchens: the inside fails first

A supplied kitchen usually looks fine. Then you cook in it for a week.

• Shelves where drawers should be — you kneel to find the pressure cooker.
• No larder — bulk atta, rice and oil end up on the counter.
• Counter height set for nobody in particular — and your back notices by Thursday.

Most of this is fixed inside the existing carcass. Here's how kitchen storage for Indian cooking should be planned, and what a commissioned kitchen changes.

Wardrobes: count before you cut

Before anything is changed, count what you own. Long hanging, short hanging, folded, bags, shoes, luggage. A supplied wardrobe was drawn for an imaginary owner. You're the real one.

Most finished homes waste around 30% of their storage. In a supplied wardrobe, most of it is at the back of deep shelves and up in the loft. Design30 is how I design it back.