MDF kitchen apron

The work­ing wall near the stove and coun­ter­top is the most prob­lem­at­ic area in the entire room. An apron for a kitchen made of MDF is designed to pro­tect it from pol­lu­tion, mois­ture pen­e­tra­tion, while such a prod­uct can dec­o­rate any inte­ri­or for a fair­ly small amount of mon­ey. A big advan­tage of aprons made of slabs was the ease of instal­la­tion, which any begin­ner in the con­struc­tion busi­ness can han­dle.

How to choose an apron for the kitchen from MDF

When choos­ing an apron from MDF, the pri­or­i­ty is to find a qual­i­ty cer­ti­fied prod­uct. This direct­ly affects the dura­bil­i­ty and com­pli­ance with envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards.

The length of a stan­dard MDF sheet is 3.2 and 2.8 m, height — 60 cm, which allows you to com­plete­ly cov­er the wall between the coun­ter­top and the upper hinged parts of the kitchen set of var­i­ous con­fig­u­ra­tions. In the case of a hood, it becomes nec­es­sary to pur­chase an addi­tion­al sheet and dock­ing ele­ments.

To sim­pli­fy instal­la­tion, you can make an apron to order with giv­en dimen­sions, but this will cost a lit­tle more.

An impor­tant fac­tor is the thick­ness of the mate­r­i­al — it can be 4.6 mm, less often — 8–12 mm.

Types of coatings for MDF panels

The way the MDF board is coat­ed deter­mines its dura­bil­i­ty and appear­ance. There are 4 types of coat­ings:

1. Lam­i­na­tion — pro­cess­ing with melamine paper of any col­or and PVC film.
2. Col­or­ing — apply­ing sev­er­al lay­ers of paint.
3. Veneer­ing is used to cre­ate the tex­ture of nat­ur­al wood.
4. Lam­i­nat­ing — coat­ing MDF with a lay­er of durable plas­tic, as a result, a prod­uct is made that looks like glass. In com­bi­na­tion with an addi­tion­al lay­er of var­nish, such boards are heat-resis­tant, do not allow mois­ture to pass through and are prac­ti­cal­ly not afraid of mechan­i­cal dam­age. The plas­tic coat­ing method is most often used in the man­u­fac­ture of kitchen aprons.

The most pop­u­lar are aprons made of MDF with pho­to print­ing, made in sev­er­al ways: apply­ing an image direct­ly to the plate using ink, glu­ing a plas­tic film with a ready-made image. The most expen­sive and reli­able is the method of apply­ing an image to the acrylic sur­face of an MDF pan­el and addi­tion­al coat­ing with a lay­er of pro­tec­tive var­nish.

Color solutions

The vari­ety of col­ors and images of fin­ished MDF aprons is end­less — the whole palette of col­ors, land­scapes, dif­fer­ent kitchen themes, flo­ra in a mul­ti­fac­eted rep­re­sen­ta­tion, even 3D images. Such a piece of fur­ni­ture, depend­ing on the right choice, can become a dec­o­ra­tion of the room, but it can also spoil the pic­ture thought out before.

Work walls look good in one tone with a table top or even one col­or, which hides the tran­si­tion between them and visu­al­ly increas­es the work­ing area. For the same pur­pose, in small kitchens it is bet­ter to use light pan­els.

When choos­ing the col­or of the apron, the host­ess should remem­ber that most of her time will be spent in the kitchen. Do not choose annoy­ing and defi­ant shades. It is bet­ter to give pref­er­ence to sooth­ing neu­tral col­ors: del­i­cate shades of yel­low and brown, white, light gray, blue are accept­able. The excep­tion is bright col­ors in com­bi­na­tion with pas­tel col­ors of the entire inte­ri­or or per­son­al pref­er­ences.

Refresh the inte­ri­or of the kitchen can pho­to print­ing. Then the work­ing wall will turn into an ele­gant addi­tion to the inte­ri­or, and the vari­ety of col­ors of the pic­ture will be able to com­bine even rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent parts of kitchen sets into one whole.

Advantages and disadvantages

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of MDF aprons is due to many fac­tors, the main of which are:

1. Afford­able price along with high moisture‑, heat- and wear-resis­tant char­ac­ter­is­tics.
2. Wide selec­tion of col­ors and pat­terns. Pos­si­bil­i­ty of cus­tom print­ing.
3. Com­pli­ance with envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions.
4. Ease of care. Attrac­tive appear­ance even after pro­longed use.
5. Installing an apron in the kitchen does not require spe­cial skills and expen­sive tools.
6. The high den­si­ty of MDF pre­vents defor­ma­tion, allows fas­ten­ing even on an uneven sur­face.

Like any mate­r­i­al, MDF apron has a num­ber of dis­ad­van­tages:

• Unpro­tect­ed dur­ing instal­la­tion, the cut edges of the plate quick­ly and strong­ly absorb mois­ture, which ren­ders the entire prod­uct unus­able.
• The use of syn­thet­ic coat­ing mate­ri­als leads to the release of haz­ardous tox­ic sub­stances in case of fire.
• Sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to prod­ucts con­tain­ing aggres­sive alka­line com­po­nents.

Interesting solutions in interior design

In addi­tion to being pro­tec­tive, the apron also has an aes­thet­ic func­tion. Man­u­fac­tur­ers and design­ers are con­stant­ly expand­ing their range, com­ing up with more and more dar­ing solu­tions. Such a sim­ple inte­ri­or detail can become a piece of the sea coast, an open win­dow to the ter­race, a path that goes deep into the for­est.

There are sev­er­al pro­gres­sive ideas that rad­i­cal­ly change the con­cept of a work wall as a flat, sol­id sur­face. If the thick­ness of the wall allows, holes are pre-drilled in the apron and built-in small nich­es are cre­at­ed for kitchen tri­fles. This solu­tion allows you to increase the func­tion­al­i­ty of the space.

Small kitchens can be dec­o­rat­ed in the form of a large stove with a live fire pat­tern on the apron. And in large ones — divide the work­ing wall into zones and arrange each in dif­fer­ent styles with sharp or smooth tran­si­tions between them.

Fans of tak­ing notes can hang an apron in the kitchen with a spe­cial coat­ing on which they write with chalk. It is more dif­fi­cult to care for such a sur­face, but it does not hold unique­ness.

Marking and cutting MDF sheets

To get a good result after installing the apron, you must first make the cor­rect cal­cu­la­tions.

If the kitchen set is not installed, the first unit of account will be the dis­tance from the floor to the sur­face of the coun­ter­top. Stan­dard floor cab­i­nets have a height of 85 cm. It will become the low­er thresh­old for installing the apron.

The width of the fin­ished MDF board is 60 cm. The same dis­tance is main­tained between the floor and hinged parts of the kitchen set. If the height is less, the slab should be cut off or brought behind the fur­ni­ture (in this case, the thick­ness of the sheet is also tak­en into account). If the dimen­sions are larg­er, it is required to pro­vide for the pur­chase of addi­tion­al mate­r­i­al and dock­ing fit­tings. The same applies to the sur­face under the hood.

The length of the apron should match the length of the kitchen set, tak­ing into account the pos­si­ble wall cov­er­ing on the sides. Before instal­la­tion, you need to take into account the loca­tion of sock­ets and switch­es, under which holes are cut in advance.

After car­ry­ing out all mea­sure­ments and cal­cu­la­tions, you can order a fin­ished MDF kitchen apron accord­ing to the dimen­sions that are spec­i­fied. Or pur­chase the required amount of mate­r­i­al and per­form mark­ing and cut­ting at home.

To cut an MDF pan­el, you need ordi­nary tools with fine and sharp teeth: a hack­saw, an elec­tric jig­saw or a cir­cu­lar saw. If you use a tool with large teeth, the cut edges will turn out to be uneven, the MDF will begin to crum­ble and delam­i­nate.

When design­ing an apron from sev­er­al sheets with a pat­tern, you need to care­ful­ly fit its details so as not to dis­turb the over­all com­po­si­tion.

How to install an apron in the kitchen from MDF

There are sev­er­al ways to install an MDF apron with your own hands, espe­cial­ly if the kitchen fur­ni­ture is already installed.

When mount­ing on a clean wall, fol­low the steps below:

1. Clean the wall, elim­i­nate rough irreg­u­lar­i­ties, treat with an anti­sep­tic and a primer.
2. Accu­rate­ly deter­mine the loca­tion of the apron, align the hor­i­zon­tal low­er and upper lines using the build­ing lev­el.
3. Apply a high­ly vis­i­ble mark­ing to the wall.
4. Under the bot­tom line, screw a mount­ing plate to the wall, which will be both a sup­port and a ref­er­ence point.

Use of adhesive during installation

The sim­plest is the instal­la­tion of the apron with mount­ing glue. In this case, it is not nec­es­sary to drill holes, but dis­man­tling will be labo­ri­ous. Reuse of the removed apron will not be pos­si­ble.

Glue is applied direct­ly to the MDF sheet around the entire perime­ter. The cen­tral part is cov­ered with hor­i­zon­tal or ver­ti­cal stripes every 10–15 cm. The processed apron is applied to the right place and pressed. Approx­i­mate dry­ing time of the adhe­sive is 14 hours.

Fastening with dowels and screws

In order to fix the apron with self-tap­ping screws, you first need to drill holes on the pan­el itself at the attach­ment points. To seal the mate­r­i­al in the holes, sil­i­cone lin­ers and met­al inserts with threads are used to screw in dec­o­ra­tive chrome-plat­ed caps.

Then the pan­el is applied to the wall and marks are applied. Holes are drilled and dow­els are installed. At the end, an MDF apron is attached with self-tap­ping screws. The attach­ment points are hid­den with caps.

Fasteners with aluminum profile

With kitchen cab­i­nets installed, the kitchen apron can be installed using alu­minum pro­files, which are pru­dent­ly equipped with sil­i­cone seals to firm­ly hold the MDF pan­el.

First, the bot­tom pro­file is attached to the wall with self-tap­ping screws, into which parts of the apron are insert­ed. Then the pan­el is tilt­ed a lit­tle, put on the top pro­file, pressed against the wall and screwed to the cab­i­nets.

The ends of the plank are hid­den with dec­o­ra­tive over­lays. If nec­es­sary, a spe­cial plinth is attached direct­ly to the pro­file.

Prefabricated installation

Some­times the pan­el is cre­at­ed from sev­er­al parts, equipped with spe­cial grooves for reli­able con­nec­tion to each oth­er. Before installing a pre­fab­ri­cat­ed apron, a crate is assem­bled on the wall with a step of jumpers cor­re­spond­ing to the size of the con­stituent ele­ments. To attach these ele­ments to the bars, clamps are used — spe­cial met­al parts that are put on the inner groove of the pan­el and screwed to the crate.

The final step is to seal the joints between the coun­ter­top and the back­splash with sil­i­cone and install the base­board.

Caring for a finished MDF kitchen apron

It is easy to take care of the MDF kitchen work­top. It is easy to clean, does not absorb mois­ture and grease.

To remove dirt, sim­ply wash the sur­face with a soft cloth and non-aggres­sive clean­ing agents. Do not use abra­sive pow­ders, hard brush­es — this will even­tu­al­ly lead to scratch­es, loss of shine and attrac­tive­ness.

After wash­ing, the apron is rubbed with a dry, clean cloth with­out the use of any aux­il­iary means.