Last Updated: 01/01/2022
It has been raining on and off for days.. That does create few problems in an outdoor conversion. The main issue is humidity. Most paints and glues don’t work well in these conditions, but another problem (for me) is light. Everything seem to be coloured in a perfect English beige 😀.
Because I still hadn’t decided which brand of kitchen to use for Gigi’s galley, it just seemed right to take advantage of this weather for getting on with the kitchen purchase. Since the beginning, I did spend some time looking at both Ikea and Bunnings kitchen.
This week, as per usual, I started to separate the pros and cons for each brand, and it wasn’t easy to come up with a winner, but we did..
Lets start with the looks. It is undeniable that Ikea seem to have the edge on this. After all, they are the kings of live display retail. You see, touch, try, (sometime even break 😀) and they have a huge variety of accessories for their kitchens. Bunnings on the other hand, have just began the game of live display and they have limited space and surely nowhere near the amount of kitchen accessories Ikea has. Take a look at both kitchen catalogue or website picture’s gallery and you can easily see that Ikea does spend a lot more money on presentation in making those kitchens look like a dream kitchen for most of us.
I know for a fact that, it does work wonders with the female shopper. On the other hand, builders and renovators, tend to look for a bit of simple but still practical approach to this kind of purchase. I like to think that I’m in this category myself at the moment.
Both brand do offer several choices in either profiles, materials and colours, but it seem that Ikea gets out of their way to use the most stupid and childish names for their products. That, use to be funny in the beginning, but it does wear you out in the long term, especially when you need to write all those name down for the kitchen list. I know I’m getting old… 😡 Other than that we are still even..
They both use a system for their cabinets and here is where the differences start to shows up. If you are building a kitchen and have room to spare, you can still use either brand, but if like in my case, you do have space limitations, this is where you will have to start to pick between the two.
Some main differences are:
Ikea cabinets are 80 cm while Bunnings are 72 cm high. Both have adjustable legs but you are losing 8 cm in the Bunnings cabinet. On the other hand, it allows you, to have a lower bench top..
Ikea cabinets are available in 40 60 and 80 cm wide while Bunnings starts for 15 cm all the way to 100 cm with several sizes in between
Ikea drawer cabinet are available in 40 60 and 80 cm wide, while Bunnings start at 45 then 60 80 and 90 on the basic model. Bunning also offer the option to use other size by using metal side drawer, but do not offer anything in the 40 cm wide. So if you need a 40 cm wide drawer, you must look at Ikea.
Ikea also offer more drawer per cabinet combination, while Bunning is only two, three of four drawer. So it seem that while Bunnings, in the ‘base cabinets’ width range has the edge, Ikea wins when it comes to drawer options
Thing is that, the cabinets are the most important part of the kitchen. Here is where the two brands, the Metod of Ikea and the Kaboodle of Bunnings similarities, come to an end.
Ikea still use their system of fastening, that they use for everything else they sell, even for their kitchen cabinets. Some people like it but it is not the standard and if you have use them previously, you know how fiddly and easy to damage they are. They also don’t offer the same strength of a proper chipboard screw, as the alloy wedge, it is always only few millimetres from the edge, and that’s normally where the timber do break.
Ikea also use plastic panel or thin laminated MDF for all their back panels. I can see the weight saving for them, but it goes at the expenses of strength and durability for us.
In the end, the Kaboodle cabinets are just better built, following the traditional system of using laminated waterproof chipboard all the way around including the sides and the base of the drawer.
Because of the environment where this kitchen will be built, being constantly subjected to bumps and movements, the Kaboodle cabinets won the race.
Finally there was another issue with Ikea that it has emerged lately and it seem that, my case, was not an isolated one..
With Bunning, I went in, sat down at the desk with the lady and within an hour I managed to purchase the complete kitchen and take it home (just all the cabinets). With Ikea, I had to spend 35 minutes on the phone, just to make an appointment!?? Then you need to check, before you drive there, that the cabinet you have chosen, they are actually available in that particular store.
Sorry, too much of my time..
Built Quality
Ease of Use
Performance
Value for Money
I recently come across this article and I would like to point out that according to Choice, Bunnings kitchen are made of MDF. Your article here seems to disagree on that. I’m about to renovate my kitchen and I really don’t understand the difference. Can you help?
Hi Helen
I guess by Choice you mean this article here written by Kylie Matthews..
and I quote:
“Kaboodle’s range of cabinets, doors and panels are manufactured with particleboard or MDF, and finished with melamine, premium melamine or thermoformed, offering a range of colours and profiles to choose from. “Hinges and essential hardware are from DTC and Hettich,” says Briony Mikrou, partnerships manager at Kaboodle Kitchen.”
What I did wrote back then was:
“Ikea also use plastic panel or thin laminated MDF for all their back panels. I can see the weight saving for them, but it goes at the expenses of strength and durability for us.”
As you can see I did mention back panel. Both kitchen brand do use both chipboard and MDF. Both material are the cheapest and worst material to use in any industry. In the kitchen environment they have two enemy to deal with. Water and screws. In my case, the back walls are used to anchor the kitchen to the wall. In the Kaboodle kitchens, the cabinet (not the doors of front drawers) are all made of 16mm laminated chipboard.
In the Ikea kitchen because of their system (metal rail) to attach the cabinet to the walls, they do use a thin MDF panel 3-5mm thick, to cover the back wall and the rail.
So effectively, the Kaboodle kitchen has a much stronger cabinet construction because of the same thickness all the way around. In a normal house environment, it probably wont make any difference, but in an RV environment, where the kitchen is subjected to constant torsion and movement,it does make a huge difference.
Finally water can completely destroy MDF, where chipboard tend to swollen a bit but it may stay there. Screws have no grip on MDF and do grab a bit better on chipboard, but not by much.
In your case, if you are installing the kitchen in a house, both brand will be fine. I hope this did help a bit..
In your previous post, you mentioned Bunning not having enough choice of corner cabinets and Ikea having better hardware.
And yet you went for Bunning in the end. What happened to the quote from the local cabinet maker?
Hi Peter
It is true. At first I thought only about Ikea giving me more choices. Then I had a better look at Bunning hardware and realised that I could get the German made Hettich (lifetime warranty) instead of the standard Goliath brand. Also as mentioned above, the Kaboodle are stronger than Ikea Metod..
The quote from the local cabinet maker was way above my budget $4900 plus another $900 for the benchtop.. Same benchtop at Bunning was $500..