It is understandable that people are always on the look-out for bargains nowadays. We are all conservative with our spending, even more so when it comes to big ticket items like furniture whether it’s kitchens, sofas or a new wardrobe. However, when considering buying fitted wardrobes or any other furniture for that matter, you should think carefully before searching out the lowest price someone will offer you.
So what are the dangers in this mindset? Compared to other home renovations (not as involved or fixed), installing fitted wardrobes should be treated as an investment to your home. Ideally, you would want to add value to your home. This is of course looking at the situation from a financial point of view. If you choose to sell your home sometime in the future, you obviously want the most you can get for it.
If you bought cheap fitted wardrobes and when installed, they do in fact look cheap. This would not reflect well on the house value. A possible scenario might be that the potential buyer would think to themselves – “Gee, the house is great, but that wardrobes needs to go. It’s going to cost X amount for me to remove, so I’m going knock that much off my offer price, otherwise it’s just not worth for me to buy”.
Another point is that if you manage to find a manufacturer who will be willing to build and install your fitted wardrobe cheaply, are they compromising on something? For example, are they using inferior quality material? Where are they sourcing their stuff from? If the end product sitting in your bedroom is poor, you can expect that it won’t last long and before you know it, you’ll need to replace it which is going to cost more money.
Is the manufacturer cutting cost some other ways? Maybe they are using off-the-shelf or merely modified standard products, which means what you get is not truly a fully customized fitted wardrobe. Or possibly, they won’t offer designing from an expert and that is left up to you alone without help. Are you going to be compromising on customer service? Will they factor into their build, components to prevent growth of moulds inside the wardrobe (and hence on your clothes).
Finally, what about guarantees or more importantly, insurance backed guarantee? If they secretly know that what you buy from them won’t last more than 6 years, they might only guarantee the wardrobe for 5 years. If the company closes its operations, will they still be contractually obligated to make repairs on the wardrobe you bought from them?
So, to summarise, be wary of what may look like saving money now but may become costly down the road. You should think of the long run. Look to employ a local carpenter & joiner who can come round, talk through your options, give advice, measure up and give up a personalised quote.
