Satin Handleless kitchen

[Colour Republic]

fly-moon? Do you mean the le mans unit? Never heard it called that before, but can see why if that's what you mean

[Fitter Steve]

does the far left wall cabinet door fail on the window frame?

[Colour Republic]

does the far left wall cabinet door fail on the window frame?

Do you mean the pipe boxing in this pic?



The boxing comes out about 30mm.

There is an 18mm panel down the side of the wall unit to pack it out slightly. So yes the door does touch the boxing if open right out to 90degrees but the door does open to around 85 degrees before it does touch which is more than you would normally open a wall unit in a corner above a worktop. So in practice it doesn't foul the boxing and certainly not something you have to worry about when using the unit and feels natural.

It would have been nicer to bury the old pipes rather than boxing but would have meant evicting her son out of his bedroom above, to re-route the pipes.

[Fitter Steve]

thats the one . Shame you didnt have to skim the ceiling they could have been done that way to

[snezza]

I see you've got an 1810 St/Steel sink fitted.

The last two 1810's I fitted were very poor quality and I was really disappointed in them. Most of their St/Steel undermounts are copies of Blanco sinks from what I can tell, and are only a patch on the quality of the Blanco ones.
Admittedly, they are a lot cheaper, but even so!

[Colour Republic]

Which ones are they Snezza?

I've used a fair amount of 1810 sinks over the last 5 or 6 years and never really had a problem.

Their manifold waste is a peice of junk but I pretty much always throw that away and use mcalpine. But quality verses price i've always found very good, better than other sinks in their price group.

Of course as you say a lot of Blanco's sinks (not all) are a step up but then so is the price.

With sinks I find it hard to convince customers to go for the upper end, even Clints spending 15-20k one of the main questions is "can we go for a cheaper sink?" It's the 25K+ ones that question it far less. It's hard to get someone to spend £350+ on what they see as essentially a sheet of metal, even more so with undermounts where the style and quality of drainer doesn't feature.

Would be interested to see which models you thought were below par to see if they are ones i've used before.

[snezza]

The one before last, had stains in the Steel that could not be removed...........Weird, as its supposed to be Stainless Steel.

This one had all sorts of issues.



This was the 3rd one I had from 1810 before I got one that I could be happy with........ It still had a slight bow in the top, but I ended up drilling holes in the top flange to pull it down. I had fitted a solid 18mm sheet of ply to the top of the sink cabinet to try and support the thing.
They had welded a brace at the front and back of the sink to keep the bowls apart. As the steel was flimsy, the sink would tend to sag in the middle without the braces. The big problem was that, the braces hadn't been welded in the right place and the sink was nowhere near flat on the top which would have left a large gap between the top surface of the sink and the underside of the granite.

After this, I went back to Blanco and paid the extra price for their equivalent sinks for the rest of the plots on the site.

I haven't brought any since.

[Colour Republic]

That is odd as that is from the Zen range which I've done quite a few of and isn't a budget range. I think that one is about £300 and blanco's equivalent is about £450.

Hand on heart I've not had those problems but can understand why you would give up after 3 try's, it cost far more than the £150 difference in hassle.

I'm not trying to champion 1810 at all but they help to suit budgets without having to supply crap products.

I'll post a prime example later on where I recommended a franke sink to a client for about £400 and they came back with a rangemaster offering at £250 which I have to admit, the extra maybe isn't worth it on styling or quality.

[snezza]

Prior to the example above, I had fitted a couple of other 1810 sinks without any problems. I just got the impression that the quality had dropped since fitting the earlier ones.
As you said, the sink above was not a budget model which made it even more difficult to accept.

If, as you say, the quality & consistency is still ok, then perhaps I should look at them again, especially if a Clints budget is tight and they feel buying a more affordable model will help.
You know what its like though, you can have 10 instances of a good experience and then one bad experience...... and it tends to put you off.
Hmmmmm....Food for thought though!

Snezza.