Woodale Designs » designs

Should Kitchen Designers Charge For Drawings?

Keith Fennelly — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 19:16:27 +0000

Well it’s the age old question amongst kitchen designers for quiet a while now. It seem that some of the top retailers are starting to charge for their designs. They also believe that all kitchen companies should charge for design, a kind of universal thing amongst designers. While I agree that something has to give and that we need some kind of payment for our hard work, time and effort it is not as simple as this. There will always be a company offering a free design, this will never change but would you be willing to pay for a design that was superior to other companies? Doubtful. I still believe that by charging for designs you are discouraging potential customers who are in the market for a new kitchen.

I spent the last four day on a short break and thought long and hard about this. There is no real way out. In order to get the work or stand a chance of getting the kitchens you need to show the client what they are paying for. What we have come up with is that we allow the client to view the kitchen designs in our showroom. The plans are discussed explaining exactly what the client is getting for their moneys worth. If the client wishes to take the plans with them, they pay a fee of €120 which is deducted from the price of the kitchen if manufactured and installed by Woodale Designs. If the potential customer doesn’t want to pay this they were wasting your time in the first place. At the end of this post I will add some pictures of finished kitchens. I can safely say you will never see one that even resembles ours in a major kitchen outlet. The reason for this is initially design, the effort was put into the layout, your ideas were noted and added to what is the most important piece of furniture in your new or existing home. I recently read a post from a guy discussing web design. He was explaining the different costs involved in designing a website. All I can say is imagine designing a website for someone else!? This is effectively what we do on a daily basis. We sit at a computer designing kitchens for someone else to reap the rewards with an inferior product.

Farrow and Ball Painted

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Stoney Ground farrow and ball painted kitchen.

Farrow and Ball painted Kitchens

Keith Fennelly — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 15:48:17 +0000

We’ve been working hard to give the client that little bit extra without increasing the cost of kitchens. Farrow and ball paints have some amazing colours to choose from. One of our more recent projects was Farrow and Ball “Stoney Ground”. Our client wanted something different colour wise but didn’t want a hand painted kitchen so we basically color coppied the paint and gave it a spray finish which is durable, resistant to steam from kettles and cooking with a beautiful even finish. When designing the kitchen we were conscious that the kitchen would need some wood elements to it so we added a walnut island with curved doors.

The SileStone worktops are Blanco Capri. They are stain resistant, anti-bacterial and very durable. SileStone has become a much more affordable counter top for the kitchen and now competes with granite on a budget level.

Here are some worktop pictures of the kitchen during it manufacture. Not much to look at in its raw stage but gives you an idea of how thing start out!

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We use an MDF centre panel when manufacturing painted kitchen doors. This elimated paint cracks around the centr panel of our kitchen doors.

Whats new in kitchen design

Keith Fennelly — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:06:07 +0000

Its difficult to say, every company has its own style when it comes to creating that dream kitchen.Painted kitchens are by far our biggest seller at the moment. In saying this, clients are looking for unique design features such as different colour islands, high rise chimney breast features and curved corners on end units rather than the conventional straight gable finish. Kitchen islands play an important part in creating the perfect design. There is nothing worse than a well designed kitchen with a boring rectangular or square island sitting on the middle of a kitchen floor. Why not build the island at split level. Maybe curved ends on either the work surface or unit ends. Solid granite worktops with a solid wood feature attached. You could also include lighting into the design, just give it a different look to the traditional island. Solid wood worktops are a really nice touch, they can really create the look you want when added to kitchen dressers or islands. Kitchen appliances also play an important part of your new kitchen. Gorenje have some very nice affordable appliances at the moment with some really nice chimney hoods to compliment any design. Elica have some amazing chandelier extraction hoods, they may not be the most practical but look great and add a touch of class. Larder presses can be one of the most useful storage solutions for any kitchen design – All the storage you need and a nice feature.