Anyone getting a new kitchen in 2020?

[skippy67]

If so, are you up for a support thread? I'm equally excited and terrified at all the decisions, I'll have to make!

[isseywith4vampirecats]

we are but have done the ground work got the measurements the quote and all we have to do first is go down and order the kitchen, we are going with DIY kitchens, then plan to death time wise the walls being plastered (old house and covered in wallpaper at the moment) the electrician to put the new plugs in, the painting of the walls, the taking the old units out, where to put the contents of the kitchen for about two weeks, and hopefully if it all goes to plan letting my son in law loose on the new units, and then getting the flooring down

good luck with yours who are you going with and what style e have gone for pale blue gloss finish with grey and white marble effect laminate worktops

[skippy67]

We'll be going with DIY kitchens. The new kitchen will be going into an existing space, so no extension, but I'm hoping to widen the current doorway into the kitchen. We visited the diy kitchens showroom earlier this year, and I think we'll be going with the Luca in matt cashmere. I want to reconfigure the space we have though, to make the absolute best use of it. Neither of us is confident enough to do the measuring etc, so will I'm currently trying to find an independent designer as well as going to Howdens and wickes.

[isseywith4vampirecats]

@skippy67 we went to wickes to get the measurements then went to the showroom to get the quote they did a computer picture of what the kitchen will look like and then a list of everything we would need for our kitchen down to plinths, taps etc, they were £2000 more than DIY so we took the paperwork down to DIY showroom and he did a quote for us so we are going with them, the cashmere luca is lovely, that's the ones we are going with but in pale blue with drawers and handles

[isseywith4vampirecats]

this is what wickes did and what our kitchen should look like when its done only difference is at wickes we liked the graphite units

[mencken]

lessons I learned:

• check the measurements of the room. Our designer screwed up.
  
• don't let a kitchen fitter do anything except fit the kitchen. Make sure he has competent subbies for plumbing, electrics, gas and floor.
  
• designer will want to sell you lots of pointless trim panels. Go through the design and cut them all out, they are just an easy £50 a go and a waste of space.
  
• if having freestanding appliances (cheaper and better) make sure the designer knows that a 600mm appliance can't be fitted in a 600mm wide space.
  

never again!

[isseywith4vampirecats]

we will be double checking the list before we go to order, we have a separate electrician, plasterer and plumber and my son in law is a time served qualified joiner we will be doing the painting of the walls ourselves, have free standing cooker and fridge freezer which are not going into cabinets, we are spending a lot of money so I will be doing all I can to mitigate any problems

[Elocampane]

I'm hoping to pull my finger out and replace my kitchen this year too.

I keep going into planners and getting overwhelmed

[skippy67]

@isseywith4vampirecats, that's good to know about Wickes. I'm hoping our local branch will let us do the same as yours did. I've heard that they don't always let you have the design until you sign up with them.

[foxatthewindow]

Yes! The appliances arrive tomorrow and the units next week, but the builders don’t get here until the week after, so we will be storing the kitchen for a month at least

[kirinm]

We have our kitchen from DIY Kitchens but it's not installed yet - well, it's partially installed but most of it is in our hallway. I didn't really appreciate how much thought my DP had to put into it. I'm gutted we couldn't get it in for Christmas.

Have you chosen your style?

[skippy67]

Luca matt cashmere.

[Dogleg]

Yes, we are having a new kitchen at the end of March. We’ve decided on the Howdens Clerkenwell ivory gloss. I have managed to get Howdens to price match to DIY kitchens but cabinets and appliances are still coming in around 7.5k which seems so much money! All in all with flooring it’s going to come in around 14k so we can not afford for any mistakes.
I expect for that sort of money Howdens kitchen designer to have measured everything perfectly but having been sent the lost of cabinets he’d missed the dishwasher off so when we go in to store in the new year I’ll be expecting him to go over everything with a fine tooth comb.
Already dreading the upheaval. Fitter says it will take 3 weeks. The whole floor needs tiling too (38m2) so it all has to run smoothly or I’ll be pulling my hair out!

[Lulualla]

I wasnt going to but I've had a burst pipe under the kitchen floor so the tiles had to get pulled up and a lot are cracked, the oven has broken and the dishwasher has broken... all in the last few days. So I think it's time to throw the whole kitchen out and start again!

[JingleBellsFartlekSmells]

I'm getting a new kitchen soon I hope. It was going to be an extension but it's too complicated so we're staying in the same footprint.

[MTJTD]

As someone that's worked in a major kitchen retailer for the past 20+ years, some advice:

It's tempting to walk into a one-stop-shop like Wren/Wickes and get "a price" for the kitchen, appliances, worktops + installation on 5 years interest free credit.

It's the easy option, but you'll pay far more than you need to.

Get a cash price for furniture only, no appliances/worktops.
Get multiple quotes and ask companies to price-match.
Do your research on things like door thickness/materials and finishes, don't let companies price-match on products that aren't like-for-like just because they look the same in a brochure.

The difference between a kitchen with 16mm thick laminate wrapped chipboard white doors and one with a 22mm thick painted & lacquered MDF white doors can be £4000+.

If you need finance to fund the project; apply for a bank loan on a low interest rate rather than go for interest free credit. That may sound silly, but it will work out cheaper in the long run.

A 10k bank loan on ~4% interest over 5 years will cost you ~£1000.

Retailers pay credit companies to provide interest free credit offers and they will artificially increase the price of the kitchen to recoup that cost from you.

It's ~£1000 to your bank or ~£2000 to your kitchen retailer.

Avoid Wren & Tecaz like the absolute plague.

Avoid Howdens unless you -really- trust your fitter. (And never buy Lamona)

Don't fall for "big" discounts; (20% +) they're invariably based on massively inflated RRPs and have no reflection on the value for money of the actual product.

Don't fall for "wow" offers; (like free granite worktops), they're offered by companies that simply inflate the value of the kitchen furniture to offset the cost of the goods offered.

DIY Kitchens can be good value but factor in their delivery charges, returns and paint batch retention policies. Buy everything you need and nothing that you don't. It's worth a trip down to their showroom.

I hear some complaints on their deliveries; they're often slow, late, have shortages/damages and on some occasions just don't turn up 'til the following day but their product is, by most reports, good value and of sound construction.

[Blobby10]

*@MTJTD * thats a really comprehensive and useful post - THANK YOU!!!! I'm going to be doing my kitchen this year (if I can ever get someone to commit to doing my en suite and bathroom [angry}) and saw an advert in a local freebie mag for a bespoke kitchen - £13.5k inc VAT for a much bigger kitchen than mine so considering having a chat with them.

What appeals to me about a bespoke kitchen is that I could (hopefully) get the cupboards built up to the ceiling and thus avoid the horrible grease spots that build up on the top of standard kitchen units!

[kirinm]

DIY Kitchen deliveries - it was really annoying that you don't find out a delivery date until very close to the actual date of delivery. We paid to find out a week earlier as someone needed to be in. They won't deliver if there are more than 6 steps to climb. There are actually 8 into our flat but they did deliver. They unfortunately gave us a delivery date of Friday or Saturday which meant someone having to take a day off work just in case. As it is, they did turn up on the Friday.

They took all the samples back and we were refunded for those. And so far, no damage seen but most of the kitchen hasn't been unpacked yet. We are missing the odd soft hinge but happened to have some so not a major issue.

We didn't buy our worktop from them and other than the dishwasher, all of our appliances were bought elsewhere and for less than some of them would've cost through DIY Kitchens.

[kirinm]

"Appliances" also includes taps and sink etc.

[kirinm]

@Blobby10 We wanted to do something similar and have bought "top boxes" to go on top of our standard cabinets - we have high ceilings. Not sure how we'll reach them.

[isseywith4vampirecats]

good luck everyone we have just gone for units with no flash inside extras just a bottom cupboard with a shelf and a drawer at the top, laminate worktops and our kitchen is 14 feet long and DIY are the only ones who have been able to offer 5 metre length worktops wickes were 4 metre so would have been more joins , we are going for walls plastered flat and painting over them, the electrics the company we are hoping to use have done some work upstairs in the bedrooms so we know they are good, and we are going for flat sheet vinyl on the floors , not having a dishwasher so just moving the washing machine next to the sink and fridge freezer freestanding with no cabinet round it

[MTJTD]

@Blobby10 No bother. :)

Regarding ceiling height units, they're not so hard to achieve as you may immediately think, depending on your ceiling height.

If you've a 2.4m ceiling, you can use extra tall housings (2297mm) & tall wall units (900mm) which with cornice will get you to ceiling height.

If you've a 2.7m ceiling, we use standard height tall housings (2117mm) & standard wall units (715mm) and put low height wall units (576mm) on top as @kirinm mentioned.

Not every manufacturer offers extra tall units and high/low wall units as standard, but it's certainly only only in the realms of the custom bespoke cabinet builder.

[Dogleg]

Ooh do DIY do 5m length worktops? Interesting! We need a run of 4.2m so I’ll look into that. Thanks for all the advice MTJTD, I have had the Lamona appliances priced and thought they’d be ok especially as they have a 3 year warranty.
We are already at the top of our budget - we’d have to get the kitchen repriced without the appliances and to be honest the guy in Howdens I find a bit difficult. Hmm what to do...

[mencken]

re taps: all the flash kitchen ones are sold with this stupid aerator thing. The idea is that it uses less water for people too dumb to understand about sink plugs. In practice all it does is splatter water everywhere. If too late, rip out the aerator. If not too late, buy a cheap tap from Screwfix.

appliances should come from ao.com, Currys etc , you just have to co-ordinate delivery. Buy from the kitchen supplier and wave off lots of money.

make sure the design considers maintenance; you want accessible stopvalves, not ones buried behind cupboards. We eventually managed to get the fitter to cut down the back of a couple of cupboards. Don't care what it looks like inside the cupboard but would like to be able to deal with a leak.

As noted to the OP, if having freestanding appliances make sure the gap is wide enough to get the thing in and out.

regrettably spending a lot of money won't mean that you don't have to spend a lot of time supervising and fixing.

[kirinm]

We bought most of our appliances from AO and also the sink from screwfix! We bought our solid wooden worktop from somewhere online. It needs to be cut to have the hob and sink in by us but it was significantly cheaper than it would have been had it come from a kitchen company.

[MTJTD]

@Dogleg

Are you dealing with Howdens direct, or via a builder? .. if you're dealing with them directly then you are almost certainly being quoted over the odds for the kitchen already.

If you're going via a builder, (and trust them to have passed on the discount) then you can ask for a breakdown of the kitchen minus the appliances.

Lamona is Howden's own-brand but not made by them; they buy the appliances in for pennies from an overseas supplier and re-brand as their own; same as B&Q's Cooke & Lewis range.

The simple truth is that there's virtually no profit in appliances these days; there's too much competition around with the likes of AO.com and such .. that's why buying them separately is the smarter choice .. it prevents unscrupulous kitchen retailers from pricing the appliances below cost (so that when you google them, you feel like you're getting an incredible deal) and overpricing the kitchen to compensate for not making profit on the appliances.

There's a manufacturer called Prima-appliances that's comparably priced with Lamona and comes with a 5 year parts/2 year labour guarantee and a better build quality.