Modular kitchen or a carpenter-made one?

A carpenter-made kitchen is built on site from sheet goods, cut and assembled in your flat. A modular kitchen is manufactured off site in standard carcass sizes and assembled in a day or two. Both can be excellent and both can be poor.

Modular buys you precision and speed. Machine-cut carcasses are square in a way hand-cut boxes usually are not, edge banding is machine-applied and sealed, and the site is a building site for two days rather than three weeks. You also get a warranty from an entity that still exists next year.

Carpenter-made buys you fit and flexibility. An awkward corner, a beam in the wrong place, a 40mm gap that a standard carcass cannot use — a good carpenter absorbs all of it. You also control the material directly, sheet by sheet, rather than trusting a spec sheet.

Decide on the room. A rectangular kitchen with clean runs favours modular. An irregular one with columns, ducts and odd returns favours a skilled carpenter. And if you go carpenter-made, buy the hardware yourself — it is where the substitution happens.

An irregular kitchen with columns and ducts favours a skilled carpenter, not a catalogue.