Kitchen Advice
Replacing your kitchen doors is a perfect way to lift the look of your kitchen without the expense of starting from scratch. But before you rush into doing so, it’s extremely important you consider a few points in order to get the look, style and finish you desire.
While some people may see replacing their kitchen doors as quite a daunting task, it’s relatively simple. I’ll be covering everything you need to know when replacing your kitchen doors, so that you can replace your kitchen doors with confidence.
1. Choosing the perfect kitchen door style
Take a look at some inspiration online, find a few images of kitchens that you really like and you can go from there. This will help you find the perfect style of kitchen for your home, whether that be modern or traditional.
Once you’ve decided on a modern or traditional style of kitchen, you should naturally start to lean towards a certain colour and door style. Perhaps a cream Bella Canterbury to set that traditional look, or the high gloss white Jayline handless door for a trendy, modern look.
Modern kitchens
Modern kitchens are often sleeker and more compact than traditional kitchens. While traditional kitchens are made from natural materials (the most common being wood) modern kitchens are usually made from a combination of materials. Some still use wood, but they’re also made from glass, metal and laminate materials.
Colours and finishes often used in modern kitchens
The majority of modern kitchens are light in colour, with whites, greys, metallics and even bright colours being used. Often, I see many modern kitchens opting for the high gloss and matte finishes, and if you ask me, these finishes look stunning.
Traditional kitchens
Traditional kitchen doors are made from different types of wood, often carved with designs or are textured. With a traditional kitchen, you won’t find any handless doors that are finished in a white gloss. They’ll have simple knobs or handles and open out like a traditional door.
Colours and finishes often used in traditional kitchens
When going for a tradition kitchen, you’ll want to match the rest of your traditional styled home. If you’ve got brown wooden furniture, then keep the consistency. A set of nice brown, polished Oak kitchen doors will do wonders.
2. Measuring your doors
Once you have decided on your new style and colour of door, it’s time to get measuring!
Don’t panic, it’s a lot easier than you think, take a look at this diagram and you’ll get the hang of it.
Still worried you’ll measure your doors incorrectly? Choose Happy Care at checkout, it protects you from mis-measuring the size of your doors. We will provide a free of charge replacement within a tolerance of 25mm on doors.
3. Hinge hole positions
The next thing to consider when replacing your kitchen doors are the positions of the hinge holes. It’s important you measure these correctly if you want to minimise instillation work. Get the measurements off, and you’ll either be drilling new holes or re-positioning the bracket to the cabinet. The image below will help you measure your hinge hole placements correctly.
Again, if you still aren’t confident with the accuracy of your measurements, add Happy Care to your order. It’ll take away the worry of measuring with the peace of mind that we will send you a free of charge replacement.
4. The hinges themselves
This part isn’t mandatory, but it’s something definitely worth considering. Soft-close hinges are well worth the extra penny in my eyes. Here are just a few benefits of making the upgrade.
Extra life
If your cabinet door is slammed shut, the soft-close hinges take the force of the impact, and this means your cabinets will live a lot longer and you won’t have to pay out for a new cabinet (a lot more expensive than some soft-close hinges).
No more loud noises
With the soft-close hinges creating a slower contact speed, almost all of the sound that used to be generated when a door is shut will be lost. So, with soft-close hinges, you can silently raid kitchen cupboards for food late at night.
Luxurious feel
Apart from the practical benefits, soft-close hinges are a great addition to any kitchen wanting that touch of luxury.
5. Fitting the doors
Don’t worry, you don’t need to be an expert in DIY to fit some new doors to your kitchen cabinets. It’s just a case of taking the current doors off (usually you just have to unclip the hinge from the hinge plate and the door will come away).
If you’re upgrading the hinges, remove the hinge plate from the unit and replace with the new hinge plates. This shouldn’t be too time consuming.
Then, screw the hinge to your new door. Bear in mind that the two screw holes won’t be pre-drilled like the hinge holes, so line the holes up, making sure they are square with the side of the door and pre-drill the holes. Then simply screw the hinges in place.
The next step is to screw the handles on, make sure you drill from the front through to the back of the door. I recommend purchasing one of our handle drilling jigs for this part, it means you’ll be more accurate, and the job will be done much quicker. You’ll be thanking me if you have a lot of handles to fit.
Once the handles are on, clip the hinges into the new hinge plates and they’re on! After you’ve fit a run of doors, square them all up and adjust the hinges to create even gaps between each door and the cabinet itself.
Finishing touches
Once you are happy the doors are correctly in place, put the plinth, end panels and cornice and pelmets in place. These finishing touches can take a while to fit, but once you see the end result, you’ll be amazed.
You can hopefully now see that fitting replacement kitchen doors isn’t as daunting as you might have imagined. If you have any further questions, please feel free to get in touch, we’d be happy to help.
