To refuse to spend £25k on a bloody kitchen!!!

[smeerf]

I've finally totted up all the quotes for my tiny kitchen and hallway refurb in my little 2 up 2 down terrace. I think it's important to note that I'm not doing any building work other than removing an old door/door frame in the hall to make it open plan, so nothing structural.

Units: Howdens, 7 base units, 4 wall, 2 full height larder (yeah there's a few pull outs in there but only 3).

Worktop: Quartz from local stone cutter.

Appliances: Siemens, sourced myself, nothing fancy except £500 for a boiling water tap.

Floor and wall tiles: Online, not super expensive.

Fitting: includes a new ceiling in kitchen area, plastering, retiling walls and floors, supplying and fitting a new boiler and all the electrics and plumbing for the room (no appliances are changing position though and we ran a new ring in preparation last year).

£25k. How. How is this possible. AIBU to tell everyone to shove their quotes somewhere uncomfortable?

Opps forgot to mention I’m having 16 units in my kitchen including an island and ‘magic cupboard’

They are trying to rip you off OP, get more quotes and I bet you get it down to about 3 grand or something.

I second all the people suggesting you talk to your builder about the Howdens quote. We have a Howdens kitchen with 5 floor units, built in boiler space, two full length units, one of which is a full size larder, 3 90cm drawers and 3 wall cabinets. Plus (an admittedly cheapest) kitchen counter and I paid them just under £5000.

Your labour is also ridiculously high. Ours didn't do plastering or tiling, true, but they DID remove an arch and install a beam and we paid the builder £5500 for the work and fitting.

Everything else seems reasonable. Especially your tiles - that's what I paid just for my very small bathroom!!!

Your builders are talking bollox about Ikea. A lot of builders don’t like fitting Ikea kitchens because they don’t have the dead space at the back of the units for pipes etc, so they have to do some actual fiddly work!
My IKEA kitchen has been in almost 12 years, amd and a lot of hard use (we pretty much live in the kitchen) and I still think of it as being new, because it still looks new.
My sister had a Howdens kitchen put in about 4 years ago and I’m very unimpressed at how it’s lasting, chipped edges etc.
Have a look at Ikea, and consider using their fitters, when iI had it done, they were no more expensive than any other kitchen fitter

10grand for fitting sounds a lot but includes a lot. As a general rule a tradesman will be from 110-250ish a day, maybe a bit more in London. Most will be one carpenter or trained trader which will be the top end and they would pay a labourer to help and pay him as little as £80. I do know kitchen fitters who work solo on small jobs but will be generally min or two.

However does your quote does include tiling, plumbing, electrics and gas fitting etc?

Ask for a timescale for each job and work out the day rate yourself. Always get more than one quote.

Ikea etc charges about 5000. I think my DH charges per cabinet but the day rate works out less I think a weeks fitting generally works out at 1300-1500. Although they just do the fitting of kitchen and work with another plumber and sparky. However they would get someone else to do the quartz etc worktops. They do wood based.

My dh says Ikea kitchens quality is not the issue but they can be a bitch to fit compared to others (no space for plumbing built in) so many traders will try to put you off

It does sound rather expensive for what you’re getting, OP. I did mine through Wren, and the total was about £20K, but only half that was the kitchen units, appliances and installation. The rest was architect’s fees, structural engineer’s fees, builders (demolishing a wall and rerouting piping and wiring in a concrete floor), underfloor heating system and tiling, decorating and curtains etc, for a 23 foot long room.
The tiler got trade discount by ordering the tiles himself, and my own plumber did the fit for the dishwasher that needed rerouted waste pipes.
I’d go back to your supplier armed with rival quotes and start haggling.
I’ve just managed to knock £800 off the original quote of £2500 for my new carpets by threatening to go elsewhere!

I’d definitely recommend DIY kitchens.

I’ve just bought out kitchen from them; handless gloss units and I have:
400mm pull out larder
Top box for American fridge freezer
Double oven tall housing
Three drawer unit
Built in microwave unit
Single wall cupboard
Double wine rack
Corner pull out with kidney shelves
Single sink
Integrated door
Double base unit
Two pull out base wire rack units
900mm double drawers
Two small single wall units
Plus 3 laminate worktops, one is breakfast bar width

So 15 units? Plus all the trims for £3.8k and our fitter has commented on the good quality.

Howdens wren and magnet were all overpriced and lacking transparency.

I’d have been £2k for thecworktops in quartz fitted from diy but as I’ve got a garden and 3 bathrooms to do I restrained myself.

My hot tap was under £300 from eBay too. Shop around ruthlessly.

Another vote for DIY kitchens, much better quality than IKEA with a similar price. Much more versatile too as nearly all units come in sizes from 100mm wide in multiples of 50mm so can fit any size.

My kitchen fitting was only around £500 - with no tiling though but that should only be £30 to £50 per sq m.

Get a lot more quotes for fitting. Oh and DIY kitchen unit come fully made up so the fitting will be a lot quicker and therefore cheaper than IKEA.
A local gas safe plumber will fit your new boiler for less than £1000. And can probably get a discount on the boiler itself too.

Lots more quotes to get I think. The whole thing should be able to be done for around half what you have said

But you're not just paying for a kitchen, you're paying for a boiler and some kick ass work in the hallway (10 grand?? What are they doing??). As far as I can see, you're paying around 11 grand for the kitchen.

Oh and your actual boiler is overpriced.

If IKEA units are shit, then so are B&Q, Howdens and Wrens - as they all come from the same place. The only difference is the lack of the service gaps as others have said.

Nothing wrong with IKEA units, their worktops are shit though. Appliances are a bit hit and miss but generally pretty good. You can use other doors if you don't like theirs.

Personally, I think I would look at using a private building company who will do kitchens ,

Out of interest, who on earth thinks it's ok to pay £3k just for a new boiler?!

My Mum has a Howdens kitchen and it isn't wearing very well at all, chipped & peeling veneer on the cupboards and the kick boards have come away from the fixings. My Mum and Dad are very elderly and barely use the kitchen and yet it has been easily damaged .
My own much older & cheaper B & Q kitchen has weathered very well in comparison to theirs. Have a look around at the reviews of the builders and the kitchens is my advice . Good luck .

Kitchen/hall materials: £1,356 - what is the for?
• Treated timber • Fixings • Pipe and fittings • Skirting • Plaster • Adhesive • Grout • Wiring• Undercoat • Satin wood • 8x fire rated spotlights • Under cabinet lights

Consider wood or a solid surface like Maia instead of stone.
I am open to something else, I just really don't want something that will be damaged by water (had a solid wood worktop in our last rental and it was a nightmare to maintain).

Can you get quotes from kitchen fitters?
Yes I'll be doing this, I just hate wasting people's time as I can only use one company.

I’d go back to your supplier armed with rival quotes and start haggling.
I went to Wren to get a competing quote to do exactly that (50% off units sale ATM) and they turned out more expensive!

Anyone commenting that my kitchen is small is not causing any offence, I know it's tiny! That's why I'm so pissed off. Bah.

instead of integrated microwave could you just have a shelf in the exact same position so if anything goes wrong with microwave you simply unplug it and insert new microwave
the labour costs seem too high too £250 a day is normal here but even if London is £400 that is 25 days which is too long according to mybuilder which are not cheap they reckon 5 days for a kitchen and 10 days for retiling new floors appliances etc
even assuming 5 days for a boiler ( ours took 1.5days) it is still only 15 days someone is taking you for a ride I reckon you can get 8-10K off that price without really compromising very much

Out of interest, who on earth thinks it's ok to pay £3k just for a new boiler?!
Someone who bought their first house last year and has never bought a boiler before?

Just having our kitchen done now, will cost about 9k and that's with a £600 fridge, re plastering, electrics, flooring, units, lights, tiling, also some of the electric cost is having a new fuseboard and the electrics being put in for a shower

and some kick ass work in the hallway (10 grand?? What are they doing??)
In the hallway: Rremoving a door frame and making good where the architrave was.
Tiling the floor.
Few metres of skirting.
Bit of snagging the bannisters which were not finished when we put them in last year (due to baby arrival), this is itemised out at £350.

If it's a decent boiler I can't see you getting one for much less. We paid just under £4k for gas central heating installing 13 years ago and most of the cost/work is the boiler, so just a boiler, in London (we're in Leeds so cheaper) plus inflation, that's probably the right ballpark.

You might be able to get the boiler gone for a few hundred less by shopping around, but it's still a £25k project, more or less. Unless the OP can save significantly on the units, labour or appliances, it's still a lot more than she's hoping for.

DIY kitchens south Kirkby- best quality I've found and come fully assembled.
Wish I'd found them sooner . They have a full design service and I'm sure they'll fit

Shop around for your quartz tops too .

Your units costing and labour costing are both far too high.
I would skip Howdens and look at Benchmarx, IKEA or DIY Kitchens.
Are there any local Facebook groups where you can get real recommendations for local builders/kitchen specialists?
I think the boiler price is ok tbh, the appliances harder to tell as price varies with the brands.
Keep looking/researching....

That labour cost is crazy!!! Everything else reasonable.

Howdens have their sale in October.

Years ago (30 years, in fact!) we wanted to put a new kitchen in our Victorian house. lt was a decent size (18 units). We went to MFI for a quote. They quoted us a ridiculous amount of money, l forget how much now, but it was ludicrous.
We ended up getting a small local company to do it. lt cost us £5000, which was a lot at the time, but still a lot cheaper than the MFI quote. That would be about £10k today. No built in appliances, either, apart from the oven and hob.
l actually paid £300 for the sink. When l think about it now, l must have been mad. lt was white and a nightmare to keep clean.
l'd get a few companies to give you quotes. And l'd be thinking about what l could cut back on. Do you really need a £500 boiling water tap, or do you just want one? A new boiler will cost you a fair chunk, as will the electrics/plastering/tiling etc. l think if you shop around and maybe make some tweaks you should be able to cut a fair bit off that.

My ikea kitchen is 15 years old and other than where we had a water leak and the trim on the top of the sink door has come away and the door where the kids lean against its as good as new.

We bought Ikeaas the one wall is 2700mm long, the cooker is 900mm long and the two corner cupboards are also 900mm long. when we looked at kitchens the units were weird widths except from ikea where they are in 400,500,600 and 900 mm widths which made it easier to work out how many units needed

We went with pineland and it was 1/5th the cost of yours there and a lot lot bigger. fitting is cheaper by a local joiner as they come prebuilt. bonus is we can change the colour whenever we like as they're solid wood and painted in farrow and ball blue currently