Anyone had a new kitchen on the last couple of years?

[ColinRobinsonsfamiliar]

Can you tell me about it?
Did you get different companies in to measure up, price up, give you a design?
Was it painful? (As in, they stayed for ages…)
were you able to take pictures and measurements into a showroom so they could do it there?
Who did you go with in the end and why?
How much was it all in?
Theres some good interest free offers but I don’t know where to start.

Thanks.

DIY kitchens..love it. You put it in yourself and do measuring yourself. Our kitchen looks amazing and works perfectly. previous kitchen was seriously broken so had no water for six months in the kitchen which wasn't fun. Cost 3k but everyone kitchen is different sized so you get a rough price by me saying that. Wren quoted 24k for same kitchen which dropped to 12 k within 10 minutes. Vvvv glad went with DIY kitchens as the quality is amazing

We used DIY Kitchens. We got quotes from Magnet and Howdens. Magnet were very pleasant but expensive - wanted £25k for an MDF kitchen and small utility, 4 appliances and quartz worktops. Howdens wanted £23k for the same. For what was included in their quotes, we spent £14k using DIY Kitchens, a local firm for quartz worktops, and appliances from AO.com. A local independent came in around the same price as Howdens. Including flooring and fitting, I think it will have cost about ££20k for a medium kitchen and small utility as part of an extension (so no plastering or pipe work is included in that).

We are really pleased with our kitchen and it wasn’t difficult to design once we had plans from a couple of other places to compare it with. But I did spend a lot of time thinking about what we wanted - and I did make a couple of mistakes, though they weren’t a fortune to rectify.

The main downside of DIY Kitchens is that you can’t swap things in and out like with Howdens so if something is the wrong size, you have to order extra stuff in and it takes a few weeks. I would strongly recommend using one of the designers on the DIY Kitchens Facebook page - there’s one called Karen who is OnePlan on Houzz who is very helpful and her fee would have been money well spent - it would have been cost neutral in view of the cabinets mistake I made (relating to ceiling height being lower than expected).

We've done ours this year. 2.5k for an ex display kitchen in a local showroom. Fitted the entire thing ourselves. I flipping love it. We've spent around 3.5k all in.

We've recently had a kitchen from Howdens fitted.

Happy with the design and quality - but hate the pricing system. Am sure we could have got a better deal if we'd played the game and produced quotes from DIY kitchens etc.

For appliances they price matched any reputable dealer online. I simply pulled up the lowest figure I could find (from Curry's/AO/JL etc) on my phone and he typed that in!

We spent 15K on units and appliances for kitchen and utility .

Our kitchen fit cost 2K and the quartz worktops 3.2k (cheaper than the Howden's quote).

Don't ask me how much we spent on tiling the floor!!

Ps - it might seem quite daunting initially, but once you've had a couple of designs done , you'll get to know the process. If we started afresh I'd definitely feel more confident about using DIY kitchens or similar.

It was last year. It wasn't about getting a delivery spot. Just cancelled deliveries, only half delivery, wrong items, items broken on delivery. It went on for months and months. they had also done the design as well. It's put me off IKEA kitchens I have to say.

Would you mind if I asked where are you based? Sounds brilliant!!

Had a new kitchen fitted in June.
We got the plan and units from wickes and then a local builder to fit it and sort out electrical work and plastering and plumbing.
He was amazing and all work was completed in 7 days.
Also he was 6k cheaper than using wickes fitters

We went with Howdens via a local fitter/builders who used them. We also had ours extended so literally everything was removed including the walls. We also had a toilet put in.
Including the building work, it took around 10 days and we had to move everything into the dining room as the kitchen door was sealed shut.
They just got on with it, no delays and it cost around £20k.
Would highly recommend Howdens

Howdens were the worst for me. Absolute cowboys...." Oh love you want drawers? Your adding several hundred extra rights there".

The pricing system is also misleading and cowboys style.

I found DIY liberating because I could choose what I want and the low prices of DIY shows the massive mark ups of other places. We went for second cheapest and got solid solid cabinets, and all the "Blum" opening and closing mechanism that magnet boasted.
Ours is medium isg and cabinets About 3.grand? Magnet wanted about 8nor 9?

Wren kitchens were a nightmare.

£40k for ours, which was finished this week. I know the price is , but the kitchen in this house was 30 years old and the entire rotten room needed ripping out and replacing, right down to a section of the floor joists. Building work to enlarge windows. New boiler. A good deal of plumbing and electrics. And the actual kitchen on top of that. Quartz worktops were £4k, LVT floor was £2k and appliances were £4k. I also paid extra to have the doors a custom colour: the current swatches are all neutrals, pastels and navy, but I wanted something bright.

We went with a local kitchen showroom. They have been brilliant, managing the project from start to finish. The space has been worked out very well: a breakfast bar has appeared, plus a LOT of drawers and cupboards, without the space feeling cluttered. Lots of little things I wouldn't have thought of, such as a plug socket in the broom cupboard to charge the Shark out of sight. When things have gone wrong or there have been hiccups, they have snapped to and sorted it straightaway.

Everything has been run with military efficiency- which is just as well, because the work took 6 weeks with tradespeople in most days, and I don't think I would have kept my sanity otherwise.

(Clearly I have to tell myself these things, given the cost of this kitchen. It's all true though!)

We got a building company to give us a price for fitting. They recommended Howdens. We got a quote from them which I thought was very high and uninspiring and they didn't offer us any ideas re design. Also with Howdens you have no idea of prices, so difficult if you want to keep to a budget. We ended up getting a local carpenter to make the units and he fitted them, the builders did everything else. The handmade units were cheaper than Howdens and he made us exactly what we wanted he made us slim units for a difficult area in the kitchen. The quaity is so much better than Howdens.

I asked a builder I trust, he said he used Magnet Trade so we did it all through them and him, we needed new windows/ door and plastering as well. It made it easier as less decision making, and it's well fitted. I used a separate company for the splashback. Looking back we should have had the flooring fitted separately by a specialist, we had amtico but the finish isn't perfect.

It took five days Mon-Fri.

The installer did it on his own, but he had a plumber one day (we had additional plumbing for another sink) and electrician (additional sockets). This didn't include tiling and it's a small kitchen, but we have a utility room next to the kitchen, and we had some cupboards, drawers and a sink installed in there too. He came in after we came up with the final plan to assess the room and confirm the price for additional work (that was free) and kept to the timings and price quoted.

The installation price was quoted by Ikea and I had no issues with non-delivery of anything. There were some items that we didn't use or were sent in error, and these were collected. We had a phone call during installation to check all was OK.

We didn't really have much to remove, but what we did have, we sold on Facebook. If we had wanted Ikea to do it, it was extra - quite steep, but I'm not sure how much. Somewhere around £150. What we underestimated was the amount of packaging there was to get rid of - we were filling up neighbours' recycling bins as well as our own for a month.

We used Howdens and were very pleased. Our worst experience was with Wren. The man came out to measure but said he didn't want to know any of our ideas. We then had to go for an appointment instore where he showed us his design which was not what we wanted at all. 4 hours later he was still trying to convince us his ideas were best.

Thanks very much for the comprehensive summary of your experienced