On 10/09/2014 08:29, fred wrote: ..
I remember that too
I am slightly bemused by the idea that the cupboards get wet enough to cause a problem. I did lose one carcase, because of an undetected long term leak in a built-in dishwasher, but I don't expect water routinely to be dripping off any of my cupboard doors.
In article , Nightjar On 10/09/2014 08:29, fred wrote: ..
SWMBO manages to spray water everywhere in the kitchen. Luckliy our doors are solid wood.
norant repeating nonsense spouted by others.
What cobblers. Some chip kitchens last fine, some don't. Its not news. I've lost count of how many chipboard goods I've lost due to edge swelling in a nd out of kitchens, its one of chip's main failure modes.
There are different grades of chip, different types & standards of finish, and different levels of wetting by users so its hardly surprising we see mu ch variation. Trouble is there seems no way to predict which goods will sur vive normal wetting adn which won't.
The last item I lost this way was a chrome & white melamine chipboard table . It gave sterling service for years, then in the space of a year with one new user it was knackered, edges swollen and breaking off. Another piece of furniture I remember served well for many years, then swelled badly from o ne single carpet wetting.
NT
Generally I'd agree. There are, however, different grades of coated MDF/chipboard. I had a crap bathroom suite that started to delaminate/swell in a few months. My kitchen is over 25 years old and is only just starting to split/swell at the base of the sink unit.
I've seen teak ones and they are fine.
Kitchens have a lot of steam, particularly over cookers and next to dishwashers. Everything gets wiped down (or should).
Unless it's waterproof MDF (there is a version that has a very high resin content) I would say it is the least suitable material possible.
WBP plywood can get wet and will eventually rot. What it won't do is get wet for 30 minutes and expand like weetabix.
MDF and chip kitchens are very much at the mercy of the covering material. Now if that jointless, OK, fair enough. But most aren't and are at risk of the joints in the melamine or whatever covering letting water in.
I've had B&Q gloss slab doors in the bathroom for approx 2 years with no bother. It's pretty steamy in there but they don't get directly wetted.
Some (not from B&Q) more expensive doors in our kitchen are warping though, not happy at all.
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and as rare as hens teeth. No way could teak be considered as an alternativ e to a man made board. Lets get real here
all reputable kitchen manufacturers recognised this problem aeons ago and t ook steps to combat it. A built in dishwasher we fitted over 20 years ago c ame with a strip of waterproof material to be affixed to the underside of t he adjacent kitchen worktop to enable it cope with the steam
Rubbish. Foil laminated chipboard or mdf will withstand wiping down with no problem.
There are untold millions of kitchens out there with chipboard or mdf cores . No way would they be as popular if they were unsuitable.
No but it will de-laminate.
In other words you are concurring with my original comments that the materi al is not the problem. Its the execution or use of it that causes the issue .
Wsnip
Look, if you really want bombproof, and you have a deep purse, use this
Not really.
Given that the execution is more often than not poor, I still say the material is unsuitable.
On 11/09/2014 08:29, fred wrote: ...
I prefer this for totally resistant to just about everything:
Bad workman blames his tools.
And I would dispute that more often than not the execution is poor. This flies in the face of common sense. People are not that stupid. If it was as bad as you make out very little of it would be sold.
I would hazard that over 90% of all furniture currently being manufactured uses man made board in it somewhere.
Its used extensively. It has proved its worth.
Yes but the finger prints, the finger prints!It can be a bugger to keep pristine as swmbo will tell you. Her and her stainless steel back panel. Her pride and joy
Or do you think it would end if you went swimming with newsprint swimming trunks?
The ironic thing is that it does not cost that much more to make it out of actual wood.
and most of it is shit. Go look down your local dump and see how much of it is in the MDF skip...
at being cheap shit that the average sheeple will put up with.
round here, I understand the average life of a kitchen is less than 5 years. Nothing to do with quality of the construction, but do with the 'taste' of the owner. Our kitchen has been in service since 1988 - it looks a bit shabby but there's been no water damage to the carcases. The doors are solid wood (varnished pine).
It is a perfectly reasonable stable cheap construction material. Far better than the pine board of the Victorians.
It's more stable than wood by a huge margin. It's nearly as strong as plywood. And it's considerably cheaper.
No. it doest play well with being soaked, but then neither does real wood, which is actually far worse.
Mine is going on 12. The only real casualty so far has been the sink drainers which rotted completely (solid oak) doing a fair bit of damage to the chipboard carcases it was resting on.
The fascia plates at the bottom (MDF) swelled and are probably up for replacement when I get round to it, but they are not 'gone' in the way the real oak wood went, or the chipboard.
So on a scale, the worst is real wood, the second worst is chipboard and the third worst is MDF.
Best is stainless steel, granite, stone or coriam or properly encased chip work tops all of which will survive complete soakings.
steam ain't a problem. Sopping wet permanently is.
Jayzus he's lost the plot completely now. What are you on about ?
Erm Yes actually.
Now you're talking bollix and illustrating your complete ignorance of the cost of manufacturing kitchens, never mind the enormous difference in the raw materials cost between natural wood and man made board.
Who is to say why it has been dumped. Certainly swmbo has changed kitchens for none other than aesthetic reasons not because they were worn out.\Anyway the ubiquitousness and sheer popularity of them would account for a lot of this.
Sheeple ? Whats that ?
You have no knowledge about kitchens in general. A lot of the mid to very high end kitchens use man made board and are very far from being cheap s**te. I fear you move in the wrong circles otherwise you would know this.
I think you're either incredibly ignorant of these things or are merely a troll.
Or the victim of one to many bits of s**te MDF and chip failing.
And just to add an actual example:
My bath panel is a bit of 12mm WBP plywood. I have not got around to tiling it - so it gets wet on a regular basis.
It is undeformed, flat and in perfect condition despite being "temporary" for several years.
If that was MDF, it would be shagged.
Don't get me wrong about MDF - I used some in a bedroom as a panel over pipes. That's what I would call a "suitable usage" for it.
MDF in kitchens is like making a shower cubicle out of tile plasterboard. Everyone does is (which does NOT make it magically right). When the grout fails, the wall collapses as happened in a rented house we occupied once. Which is stupid as there are several suitable panels that could have been uses instead.
Well as I said previously. You get what you pay for. Buy rubbish and thats what you get, rubbish.
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