Why Buy Our Worktops?

There are a lot of companies out there selling worktops, a few good, most bad and a some down right awful.
So why would you buy from W-K-W?  Well, try this;

What Matters.
Hardwood Kitchen worktops are our business.  We actually make them, not just import them and sell them as part of a whole range of other items.  So no pretending about being ‘the importer’ or ‘direct from the factory’.  And since we make them, we know all about them. What glue (D4 waterproof – lots of people say they use it when actually they wouldn’t know it if  it landed on their heads), what timber – put one of our samples next to a competitor who buys in from China or Eastern Europe – and most importantly how to dry the timber.  This detail is much more important than most clients realise.  Chinese, Siberian and Ukrainian Oak is a much smaller version of the towering trees you see in the UK or America.  Average trunk size is just 14 inches compared with 38 inches for American White Oak (which means White Oak has 6 times the surface area), so they have to leave in sap wood and defects we wouldn’t even think about.  The old ‘time is money’ bit kicks in and mass producers start cutting all sorts of corners to dry the timber faster (especially at the moment with the world and his dog trying to cut costs– some of the worktops we have seen have been simply lamentable) which means the worktop is just a ticking bomb.

Who else does this and how do they compare?
The question any buyer wants to know is where do I get the best value.  If, by the way, you just wanted the cheapest, try topworktops, realwoodflooring, realoakfloors or worktopsexpress, just to name a few – and good luck with that.  You can pay a lot more for roughly the same item by going to Barncrest or SMI.  Despite better marketing, the product doesn’t vary a great deal.  Another way to go is Second Nature worktops from Karl Danzer.  Distributed though and delivered direct by PWS, places like hardwoodfloorstore, kitchensupplies, withknobson, colinspicer or hardwoodkitchenworktops sell the worktops, but how well they know them is subject to debate.  Have a look at the written detail on the websites and see if they all the same photgraphs, same text which seems to be better written for search engines than humans………. you get the picture.  Given the length of the supply chain, I would suggest more value is in the sales and distribution rather than the worktops.  Checkout their views on sustainability too – anyone that sells any African Hardwoods as sustainable is either a saint or a liar.  Get a sample though – check it out for yourself, but do put ours next to it.  Despite Second Nature being sold as 40 mm thick there seems to be a huge difference in thickness between theirs and ours.  Hmm.

So are we really different?
And what about us and our REALWood worktops.  Well, firstly we are confident enough to offer the sort of money back guarantees you see above. And with good reason.  American Hardwoods are the finest in the world – ask any cabinet maker.  With the best hardwoods comes the best equipment – just to compete with the stupidly cheap labour of Eastern Europe and China we need to have the latest technology.  And with that comes knowledge and expertise you just don’t find in Latvia, the Ukraine or Shanghai. What you are paying for is the value of timber and the quality of construction.  Now, more than ever, you need to be confident what you are buying.  Even more importantly, you have to buy it from the right place.  The credit crunch is no fun for any of us, but we guarantee never to cut any corners in timber, drying or manufacturing.  To be honest that’s about the most important reason for buying a quality worktop from W-K-W.