To just go to homebase and buy a kitchen?

[BasinHaircut]

Been going back and forth between sprucing up our existing kitchen with new work tops, tiles, paint the cupboard doors, new flooring, and we need a new oven and the integrated fridge freezer is on its last legs I think. But when I think about the expense of that, and with a view to having a new kitchen in the future (maybe 5 years), it seems like we might as well just do it now and reside ourselves to paying it off over X years as it will work out cheaper in the long run.

Anyway, when DH and I were buying this house, we fell in love with an odina kitchen in homebase. It's a relatively expensive one but it's lovely. At the moment it's 60% off plus and extra 15%. I know they all do deals all the time, but AIBU to think fuck it and just go and sort one out?

Reckon we are talking about £10-12k all in with fitting (using homebase??).

We are supposed to be having a break from DIY/decorating as we've been at it for a year now, but I just want this house DONE. It's the last major thing.

What I'm really asking is are homebase any good? Anyone got an Odina kitchen? Used homebase fitters? I want an 'all in' type job. Don't want to source everything myself as I cannot be arsed. But is there anything in particular I might want to avoid? I don't mind sourcing the odd appliance, will probably get and American fridge freezer from elsewhere etc.

My Homebase kitchen was scheduled to take 7 working days. It took two months (and many tears & panic attacks).

Take from that what you will...

Used Homebase fitters for our bathroom. My advice? Don't. DH could've done a better job blindfolded and now the job is done Homebase make all the right noises but we are seeing very little action in putting right the shoddy workmanship.

The kitchens themselves are fine (I've had 2 in 2 different houses). Be very, very careful to check the delivery to ensure you have everything you ordered as you can't just nip to the local store to pick up a missing door. It has to be ordered and takes an age.
Watch the price of their accessories eg plinth, cabinet lighting, end panels. These are £££ compared to eg ikea - both my homebase kitchens were gloss white, upon saying to the designer I'd just pick up theses items at ikea she miraculously matched the price - same for built in appliances - check the online prices for anything you might buy from hb and see if they will price match (but beware they only supply a limited range and you may be better simply sourcing the appliances that actually suit your needs elsewhere).
I can't comment on their fitting as we used our own joiner. IME the fitting quality can make a huge difference to the overall finish, it's worth getting local recommendations.
YANBU to go ahead and do the kitchen (I figure you're better to do these big jobs asap, at least then you can live with the benefit), but I think YABU to think you'll be able to get the best deal and end result without putting in some legwork.

I'm not impressed by Homebase at all. We are looking at kitchens at the moment and went into Homebase and asked for a price list but apparently the only way we can get the prices is to make an appointment and let them design the kitchen for us. DH has already done this, but we were told when people do that it rarely works and it's better for them to do it so they can push their fitting. The kitchen will be coming from B & Q.

I don't like their fitters. The finish is everything. Could you get some local recommendations? Word of mouth is boss with tradespeople in my opinion.

YWBU, home base kitchens aren't great and I've heard dreadful things about their fitters.

Get an independent kitchen fitters and buy a kitchen from DIYkitchens.com or howdens.

YANBU to want it done though.

Go check out Ikea - I don't know about their fitting service - but the kitchens themselves are great and really good value for money.

We used Wickes and the fitting was v good. We sourced our own appliances because they were v expensive and also bought our tiles, flooring, paint and light fittings elsewhere and the fitter did all that plus sorted a problem with the electrics.

Don't you have to work every tiny detail out yourselves with IKEA though? I just don't have the brain space for it! I do like their kitchens though.

We got ours from ikea and used their fitters...great kitchen and the fitters were pretty good plus it was all done in 5 days the dirt though was around for months. Couple of things though; rip out your old kitchen yourself as it saves quite a bit of money and if it's what you want, go for solid wood work tops so they can be sanded and waxed. I like the idea that all Ikea kitchens are the same skeleton so if you want to change doors, etc at a later date that's all you need to buy!

DIY kitchens are really great prices - we had a kitchen priced up by Wickes when their 60% + extra 10% off offer was on. Then went and looked for equivalent at DIY kitchens, it was 1/3 to 1/2 cheaper again and better quality units. You could order from them and employ local kitchen fitter/builder to get it all done? Depends what sort of trade off of price vs convenience you are willing to make.

A cost saving tip though - bigger and less units. eg we kept finding that say an 800mm wide unit was only marginally more expensive than a 500 or 600mm, so try not to have little fiddly 300/400mm units, have wide ones.
Drawers are a LOT more expensive than cupboards - drawers are worth it to me so we are getting them anyway but if cost is a sticking point there are savings there.

Use moneysupermarket or similar to find best price for appliances and if possible use myvouchercode/quidco etc to maximise savings.

Check out the MN kitchen lessons learnt thread in Property/DIY. Loads of great tips there.

I have a Homebase Kitchen which is a Shaker style from about 2007/2008. It is okay and still looks reasonable. At the time alot of the kitchens had shallow top cupboards where you couldn't put a dinner plate but with this one you could hence my decision.

The thing with using a store to fit a kitchen is that they have to rely on external suppliers to get the stuff in. The fitters are independent, they just have a contract with the store. (I work in a similar place) I can testify to the amount of times I have sat on the phone to them trying to get a straight answer out of them about WHY they told me all this stuff was in stock when I placed the order last week. Sometimes something won't get delivered or will be wrong and we will phone up, ask why and they will say oh it is on the van etc and then 2 days later you will be chasing them again for this item and they will be going Nah, love, that's been out of stock for 3 months.

Personally if I could afford it, I would be buying from them, getting everything delivered, checking all is correct and then hiring my own fitters. Because at least then you know you have everything and you actually have direct oversight over them.

Do be prepared to be without a kitchen for a good couple of weeks. Ours took 4 weeks and from asking around, that seems pretty much the norm.

dh fitted kitchen with his dad and we had a carpenter to do worktops and trims

Ikea do kitchen planning, but they are variable. The first advisor was hopeless and didn't have any ideas or advice to give at all. She expected me to know what I wanted and I had no idea. The second one was much better and had ideas about how to make things fit well and also save money.

The £10-12k for a Homebase kitchen sounds expensive, but if you can afford it and that's the one you want - go for it. Probably better than spending quite a bit botching now and then the same amount later doing it properly.

I've just had an enormous ikea kitchen fitted with island, expensive chimney extractor, loads of cupboards and internal bits, induction hob and 2 AEG ovens and it was probably £7-8k tops.

Looked at Howdens but they were dreadful.. Rude and obstructive and I got the impression they weren't interested in selling me a kitchen at all and the designer had clearly never cooked anything in his life and ignored all my suggestions and spent loads of time incorporating design features that I repeatedly told him I didn't want. I didn't really like any of their cabinets and they couldn't supply a piece of worktop big enough for my island either.

they were terrible with delivering the wrong things though and I had to make a fuss. We did get some extra bits though which they let us keep and it went towards the utility room. We still have a doorless larder cupboard in there:)

Second the drawers in base units - all mine are like that and they are brilliant.

Also, try not to get hung up on the claimed 'full' prices at anywhere that has a semi-permanent 60% off sale. Total fiction.

I used to work for Homebase.

I wouldn't buy one of their kitchens.

Try B&Q. They planned ours, we made some tweaks (turns out DH is a bit of a planning whizz) and then we ordered. Once we had the initial design/spec list we broke it down and I sourced the oven & hob, taps and extractor cheaper elsewhere. We got the worktop locally and a joiner (BIL but we are paying him) to fit the whole thing it. It's a 3.5m x 3m L shape, units top and bottom I would say cost wise it'll be about £5000 including the flooring.

You can do it reasonably but you do have to shop around.

It sounds to me like you are going to be changing everything except the carcasses of the units. These are not the expensive bits. Personally I'd go to a few kitchen companies (distributors are cheapest if you can find one ) and get them to quote. This has worked out the cheapest for us in 3 houses. The fitting they provide is usually excellent and a lot cheaper than the likes of B & Q or Homebase. Our new kitchen in new house was installed this week, brilliant job and installation was £600 compared with £1500 from B &Q plus the kitchen was £££ cheaper than Homebase or B&Q. The sales reps couldn't come near the price when I asked them could they price match.

If you're in NI give me PM and I can give you the company details.

At least with Ikea there is the online kitchen builder. Which takes alot of stress out of building a kitchen.

Magnet annoyed me (apart from the prices). With them you have to decide on the doors you want first and then try to build a kitchen around it, which meant that you didn't get the full range of cupboard sizes and therefore couldn't make the best kitchen possible in the space available (this isn't an issue with Ikea).

It is a good idea to source your own appliances with any kitchen so you can get what you actually want, not what that particular shop wants you to have.

I've used both Ikea and DIY kitchens. DIY are probably better quality as they come pre assembled and have a far wider range of sizes which really helps, and they will also customise if you need something a bit different (e.g their standard wine rack is 20cm but we had about a 15cm gap (driven by boiler and cooker so not too flexible) and they customised one to fit.

Homebase did a design with us a few years back now and we spent about an hour with the helpful young girl. However, we were advised it would cost 3,000 just for fitting ( which is a lot considering that private kitchen fitters are a lot cheaper, I was gobsmacked at that price, although this may be different now of course) We didn't go ahead with any of our plans but I think most places do this service, you book up first to see the advisor and receive a print out at the end of how it should look.
The B and Q range wasn't too bad , although we did have the advisor ring us up about 5 times trying to persuade us to go ahead ( ' this deal is only on for a few weeks etc etc) but we decided against it all and I still have my old kitchen , which must be about 25 years old now ( previous owners one) although the doors are proper wood, most of the ones we looked at were all MDF and they are very deep inside, most cupboards are tiny in new kithens I noticed too. Its a minefield, and you can spend thousands if you want granite tops, stone floors etc as well.

For £10k I'm having a bespoke mid-range kitchen from an independent retailer and that includes a new dishwasher,, all plumbing, electrics and fitting as well. It's not MDF or foiled doors and includes a larder unit and pan drawers.
A similar design from Wickes was £2k more and B&Q was £3.5k more!

We've had B&Q twice and been very happy with both the kitchen and the fitters. The second time, the two fitters were profoundly deaf and communicated with each other by signing and with us by text. They were great- so good that we had them back later to fit a wood floor in the other downstairs rooms.

We did try Homebase at the planning stage and took them a plan, but their quote was more expensive by several thousand.