Wickes Kitchen problems

Discussion in 'Kitchen Fitters' Talk' started by Doodledoo81, Nov 24, 2021.

  1. woodbutcherbower

    woodbutcherbower Screwfix Select

    With the greatest of respect Brian - all your post will achieve is to wind the OP up and induce even greater levels of stress than he/she is already experiencing. It isn’t helpful in any conceivable way. A proportion of it is also based on assumptions, half-truths and sheer falsehood. Most of the posts on this thread have been contributed by professionals (myself included) - people who do this for a living. Aspects such as the junk under the carcass legs have already been fully covered, as has the use of chipboard shims, less-than-ideal though they might be. If what you said about this specific topic was even remotely true for example, the hundreds of square kilometres of chipboard flooring panels being laid every year would all be rotting into oblivion.

    If you’re fitting your own kitchen, then good for you - but if it’s going into a new extension, you’ll more than likely have dead-flat levelled floors, perfectly smooth newly-plastered walls, corners which are bang-on square and so on.

    Real life’s not like that.

    Re-read the thread, take on board what folks like me, Jord and Willy are saying based on decades of collective experience, and accept these contributions in the spirit of their provision. I contribute to many forums, and a constant given on all of them, is that amateurs will always know better. The worst type of customer people like me work for, are the blokes who once put up a shelf, which then qualifies them as being an expert on everything.

    To the OP - I stand by what I’ve said, and by the positive encouragement I’ve tried to offer.
     
    Jord86, Kitfit, Roys and 4 others like this.
  2. Tilt

    Tilt Screwfix Select

    One thing you would do well to think of is that it is not the installers fault that there is a hole in your floor..... You are making it sound like it is their fault, to me at least.

    I agree, the legs should be level as it is not difficult to do this, and I would always tidy up under the cabinets leaving it rubbish free.
    Cannot see a problem using chipboard blocks but making them bigger would have been better IMO.

    Common sense would have been for the fitters to put something over the gap in the floor as terrymac said, but this can still be done, and should be done IMO.

    Most other things have been said. I have fitted a couple of Wickes kitchens (subcontracting / helping a friend out) and as one customer didn't want to pay as her fella had instructed her to not pay before he got home, we were instructed by Wickes to start taking the doors back off and put them back in the van.

    She did pay up eventually but what a faff.

    Glad I never had to use Wickes directly for supplying me work.
     
  3. Doodledoo81

    Doodledoo81 New Member

    I'm not blaming them that the hole is there, but if they had just told us we could have got it sorted out, instead they've just rushed along and sat the legs practically on top of it.
     
  4. jonathanc

    jonathanc Guest

    Just ask the fitters to lay a bit of ply over the hole: will take a minute to wind the legs up and back down onto the ply.
     
  5. Doodledoo81

    Doodledoo81 New Member

    If its that simple why did they not just do it in the first place? That's what posses me off
     
  6. Astramax

    Astramax Super Member

    PS...the painters will clean up before they start! o_O............
     
  7. woodbutcherbower

    woodbutcherbower Screwfix Select

    *Realisation dawns* It was the sparks who dumped all the junk under there.
     
    Mr Rusty and kitfit1 like this.
  8. kitfit1

    kitfit1 Screwfix Select

    Nah, they would never be able to lay on a floor long enough to dump that much rubbish :D

    To the OP, the rubbish under the cabs is something that as a fitter myself i could never put up with. I find it very difficult to work with rubbish all over the floor.............which is why i hate coming in after the sparks and the plasterer.
    The "hole" in the floor is not a "hole" at all, it's where a pipe or a cable was buried before your previous kitchen was even fitted. In fact, it probably runs under the rest of the floor as well, it's just that the rest of the floor has been filled in.
    Going from all your pics so far, the floor hasn't been floated at all and until it is i'm not shure you can come to any conclusion about how level it may or may not be. One thing for shure though, as a fitter, i would be 100% shure what i had fitted was flat and level in all planes and as a fitter i would have known how out of level your floor was. I don't think from any pics you have posted we can tell how out of level it might be. But, and i may be reading this wrong, are you complaining about it being out of level under the cabs ? If you are, then it's 100% nothing to worry about. The only thing that matters is what the finished job looks like.
    Some of the UK's greatest craftsmen existed 100's of years ago, like @woodbutcherbower i have worked on restoration projects following these craftsmen. You simply would not believe the amount of rubbish they had to deal with to get that good finish we see in our great country houses. What matters is the finish...........not how you get there.
     
    woodbutcherbower likes this.
  9. baca

    baca New Member

    Are you happy with the rest of the work the fitters have done or is there more problems with your kitchen
     
  10. koolpc

    koolpc Super Member

    There are kitchen fitters, and kitchen fitters! Some just leave the crud there, dont bother with what cant be seen.

    Well, as my Dad used to tell me when i was a kid, 'he could see it' and that matters. Pride in a job. Seems amiss these days.
     
  11. woodbutcherbower

    woodbutcherbower Screwfix Select

    Bang on, kpc. My whole attitude to work was instilled into me by two single events;

    1 George Elliott (RIP), the old boy who apprenticed me almost 40 years ago.

    "Lad - there's no such thing as a job which is almost perfect. It either is perfect - or it isn't."

    2 Watching my Grandad in his shed as a kid, lovingly sanding and revarnishing the underside of a table he'd bought for pennies at an auction and somehow managed to get home on his pushbike. Me - "Why are you spending so much time making the underneath nice, Grandad? No-one will ever know".

    Grandad -"I'll know".

    Stayed with me to this day. Always will.
     
    Mr Rusty, JimTiler and koolpc like this.
  12. kitfit1

    kitfit1 Screwfix Select

    Not quite the same, but my late wife's father was an antique restorer. He was was also quit a well know "faker" of antique furniture. He died aged 101 in 2001. Around 1997 ish me and him went to a well known antique center in Warwick that was also holding an auction at the time (he lived in Warwick). He spotted a Japanese cabinet that he recognized, he didn't mention it to me until we went for pint in the pub over the road. When we got back to the auction, the cabinet had been sold (as it turns out for £92,000). We found the guy that had bought it and Alf asked him how much he paid, he was a snooty sod and said "i never discuss what i pay for my antiques" Alf said to him, "tell you what, you tell me how much you paid and i'll tell you how much i sold it for when i made it"..........................the look on his face was to die for.................i'll never forget it. The smile on Alf's face was even better, even at 101 he got one over some smart city slicker that knew nothing and he died knowing that.
     
  13. Jord86

    Jord86 Screwfix Select


    If you haven't got a clue, then best to refrain from posting.
     
  14. woodbutcherbower

    woodbutcherbower Screwfix Select

    Brilliant story. Reminds my of every 'Lovejoy' episode. :)
     
  15. kitfit1

    kitfit1 Screwfix Select

    The thing is though, it wasn't a "Lovejoy" moment. At the time it was very real and very very tense. Because Alf had known who he made it for in the 1930's....and we both knew what it was described as in the catalogue.
    Alf absolutely knew though that he made it.................even to the point that his sig was under each drawer..............and it was.
     
    woodbutcherbower likes this.
  16. CGN

    CGN Screwfix Select

    What’s going on, can’t be arsed to go from the start :)
     
  17. woodbutcherbower

    woodbutcherbower Screwfix Select

    Fantastic. Ace in every way. Earlier on in this thread I posted about having spent a fair old time in the presence of an original Chippendale cabinet which Nostell Priory (AKA NT) had recently paid £200,000 for. It was a thing of absolute beauty - really top-notch, and something whose craftsman creator I envied and hugely admired. All of their Chippendale originals are cherished and coveted, but I was given permission (and a set of white gloves) to carefully move the cabinet a few feet away so I could get to the vast old door I was trimming and re-hanging. As I moved it, a scrap of crumpled old paper appeared on the carpet as if by magic. I reached down, picked it up, unscrewed it, and read the scrawled, ancient pencil marks on it.

    "Isaiah Turton cabinetmaker, Sheffield, 1934"

    Repair? Restoration? Or fake? Another Alf job perhaps?
     
  18. woodbutcherbower

    woodbutcherbower Screwfix Select

    We hijacked the OP's thread and are now talking nonsense amongst ourselves @CGN It's like a troll post but without Gordon Peters or porn.
     
    Mr Rusty and CGN like this.
  19. Jimbo

    Jimbo Screwfix Select

    I'm not sure gloating over being part of a fraud, and especially of this magnitude, is really something to boast about tbh.
     
  20. jonathanc

    jonathanc Guest

    I don’t think kitfix was part of the fraud after all I don’t think he had any personal or financial gain?
     

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