Thread: kitchen cabinet - Laminates!

I'd say you would still be cheaper to relaminate them.

I did the same thing to my kitchen last year. I think from memory it cost around about $3000 to redo the kitchen but that included $1700 on appliances, tiles etc.

sheets of laminate vary depending on colour and finish/testure. i think the most expensive sheet i bought was about $300 but that was for 3600 x 1800 sheet. i think the popular colours come in smaller sheets.

i just bought mine from laminex, i think. go to the manufacturer rather than through a kitchen or hardware shop.

Clint

you can get them vinyl wrapped (heated laminate vinyl vacuum formed over your door) or you can cut them from new board if you want. if you cut them from new board you will have to edge them (either the abs style or normal edgestrip) but you will need special machinary, like an edge bander. you could probably get away with contact adhesive but the end results will be disappointing.

laminating over old board is fraught with disaster as the substrate no doubt will be sealed and the glue wont get into the board ,also(for the senior members info) to laminate anything it requires a balance sheet on the opposite side of the panel to equalise the different tensions on each side of the board ,this makes the job uneconomical,replace the doors!!!
i supply the info as a kitchen manufacturer for 23 years now ,and as it is said
"advice is cheap,but the right advice is priceless"
kind regards
tom armstrong
www.armstrongcabinets.com.au

You'll find that there's not much difference in $/M2 between laminate and the coloured melamine board. To relaminate your doors and panels you'll have to roughen up the existing surface to get a good key and you'll also ave to trim the doors down to allow for the added thickness of your new edging.

Mick

Originally Posted by journeyman Mick

You'll find that there's not much difference in $/M2 between laminate and the coloured melamine board. To relaminate your doors and panels you'll have to roughen up the existing surface to get a good key and you'll also ave to trim the doors down to allow for the added thickness of your new edging.

Mick

but isnt laminate sheet thicker than the laminate applied to melamaine. The laminate on the melamine sheets is ok for internals but may not be good enough for face cupboards and benchtops.

it wasnt that hard to prepare all my doors for relaminating, probably took me a morning. I simply ran the edges past a straight bit in my router table to shave off 1mm or so (mainly to just get rid of hte old edging), then hit the old laminate with some 80 grit on my orbital, blew the dust off with the aircompressor and washed it all down with acetone.

I was lucky in that my dad had a spray gun that would spray the contact and a big factory with lots of benches, so i was able to spray the contact in two batches so it didnt take anywhere near as long as brushing it on. (although it was a pain to cleanup afterwards)

I had all the doors and benches finished in 1 day.

I had one bit where i needed to get the old laminate off the side of a wall cupboard as i didnt have room. so i just got a heat gun and a scraper and pulled the laminate off, then just hit it with the belt sander to clean up the cupboard and reapplied new laminate.

all my door fronts were in good condition, the kitchen itself was probably less than 10 years old, just a really bad colour.

provided your cupboards and the old laminate is solid i would say give it a go, it will be alot cheaper than puting in a new kitchen. alot of people had told me it couldnt be done, but it has been in for over a year now and nowhere has it come away from the old laminate.

I will take some photos and post them next week.

Melamine board is fine for doors and panels, far better IMO than laminating an existing door due to the possibility of warpage. It's definitely not suitable for benchtops.

Mick

Originally Posted by journeyman Mick

Melamine board is fine for doors and panels, far better IMO than laminating an existing door due to the possibility of warpage. It's definitely not suitable for benchtops.

Mick

my original doors were white melamine (internal) with a laminate applied to the face, (presumably directly to the mdf in my case) so wouldnt that door be prone to warping anyway, given that the laminate is say 0.7mm and the white internal side only covered in 0.3mm. not sure about the thicknesses, but i had thought laminate was generally 0.7mm i must have read that somewhere. i know the laminate applied to the white melamine is not as thick as the laminate sheets you buy.

my point is that in my case i had two different thicknesses on either side of the substrate to start with, so the doors would potentially be prone to warping if the substrate moved. but where the doors are laminated both sides and edge banded wouldnt there be minimal moisture uptake and little chance of movement in substrate.

Clint,
melamine board generally has a coating on both faces which is pressed and "cooked" on. It is very thin - no idea exactly how thin. Your doors didn't warp and that's great however I wouldn't do the same for several reasons:
1) It might warp - this possibility would be enough to stop me from doing it on a job, if I have to come back and rework it costs me time, money and reputation.
2) It's not cost effective - too much labour involved in prepping the panels for re-edging and gluing.
3) Client is without doors and panels for at least a day (or more) - if I just recut everything I can come in and replace it all with minimum mess, fuss and inconvenience.

Having said all that though there's nothing wrong with your approach, it's just too much work to be commercially viable (plus that fear of having some of it warp just gives me the heebie jeebies! :eek: )

Mick the cautious

Mick

i agree, if i was doing it commercially or to someone elses kitchen i would go the new door route, probably even the whole new cabinets route as well.

if i was doing it commercially or to someone elses kitchen i would go the new door route,[

you say that if you were to do iy for someone else then new doors are the way to go ,but fotr your own project relaminating doors are the go ,seems to me to be a bit of double standards going on here,either you do the job right or you dont do the job at all,the best process must be the one you use ALL the time
kind regards
tom armstrong
www.kitcheninabox.com.au

[QUOTE=arms]if i was doing it commercially or to someone elses kitchen i would go the new door route,[

you say that if you were to do iy for someone else then new doors are the way to go ,but fotr your own project relaminating doors are the go ,seems to me to be a bit of double standards going on here,either you do the job right or you dont do the job at all,the best process must be the one you use ALL the time

I think there is some confusion here as to the thread topic. Ryan23, from my reading of his post, doesn’t install kitchens for a living (neither do I). so my response has been as that of a weekend warrior and not someone who does it for a living.

I think the approaches are generally different. Cabinet makers have a lot more expensive machinery they we do and as they are getting paid for it time is $$. Plus cabinet makers have a reputation to consider. Accordingly, a cabinet maker will take a different approach to fabricating a kitchen, and will often use different materials and methods. i.e. post formed benchtops and vinyl wrapped doors.

However to me on the weekends time isn’t $$. I stop getting paid at 5.00pm on Friday so whether I watch the cricket or relaminate my kitchen the cost to me is still nil.

So for me, as someone trying to modernise my kitchen, I could have spent $10k + on having a new from scratch kitchen installed or taken the approach I took and saved myself $6,500. while a brand new professional kitchen will obviously look better, in a couple of years of wear and tear I don’t know if you will see the $6,500 difference between the two.

So I don’t think it is a case of double standards, it is just different approaches.

I think there is some confusion here as to the thread topic

i tend to agree with you about the thread going off at a tangent,and i accept your reasons for your comments,but the fact still remains that either the job is done right or should the job be done at all,i reply to this forum with a vast knowledge of the cabinetmaking/kitchen manufacturing/supervisor/patternmaking industries for the passing on of answers to problems faced by so called weekend warriers,we were all warriers (weekend on not )once .
kind regards
tom armstrong
www.armstrongcabinets.com.au

hi guys!


right now i am actually getting quotes for NEW cabinet doors...dotn think i cant just stick new laminate on the existing ones

anyway heres to my other set of newbie questions

1) a couple of company had actually quoted me on the use of VINYL instead of laminate! was wondering are there any major differences in those 2? and which is better?

2) im in need of appliances like rangehood and sink n cooktop - which compaines (betta electrical? clive petters?) are best in supplyin them?

im particular interested in gettin a good canopy rangehood
any idea which "brand" is good? i was hoping to get one thats 90mm with the buttons on the side or top of the ranghood but not UNDER neath where the vents are (tends to get dirty/oily very easily)

THANKS guys

Where are you?