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Yeah it makes sense when you take all that into account for sure. Not sure if I want to stretch to that personally. What did you end up with yourself?
M4xime-
We're just buying a load of 8x4' 18mm Douglas Fir rotary-cut ply sheets, and getting our builder (who's also a joiner) to turn them into cabinet fronts and side panels.
Each sheet is ~£160+VAT, and you can get 6x standard (600x800) base cabinet fronts out of one.
Only risk with this, is visually ending up drowning in a sea of ply... We may well balance it out with doing the tall cabinets in pre-laminated white formica-faced ply. Will see how it looks with all the base cabinets done first.
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We went down the plykea route - can confirm it's very expensive, it cost more than everything else in the kitchen combined.
We decided it was worth the cost in the end as it's in a kitchen/diner/lounge meaning we're seeing it all the time so we'd may as well make it look nice (which it does).
ectoplasmosis
Lw.
That’s a normal price across all the custom fronts purveyors, even the Poland-based ones aren’t much cheaper. Hipster tax is real.
Even if you go semi-DIY, Fenix is expensive: we were considering doing some of our fronts in Fenix, buying the Fenix sheets direct from manufacturer and getting a friend who has a laminating machine to stick them on. They cost £115+VAT per sheet, so double that as you need to laminate both sides to avoid warping. Plus the cost of an 18mm sheet of ply to go in between, and mates-rates for doing the lamination, and you’re looking at £700 per sheet inc VAT before you’ve even cut it up into cabinet sizes, routed the hinge cutouts/handles, tidied up and oiled the edges, accounted for waste/damage etc…