To use DIY kitchens…

[TheBeaTgoeson1]

Hello, posting for traffic!! Following on from my thread about wren kitchens, I would love to ask the same question about DIY kitchens.

i’ve seen this supplier mentioned before on here, and I would love to know what peoples experiences have been with them. I know I can look at the reviews. But what was great about the other thread was hearing specific experiences, and being able to ask questions!

The showroom is at a distance from us, and we would need to go as I don’t want to buy blind online. So just checking if it’s worth it, would anyone feel comfortable to share the kind of savings they made by going through DIY?

any help, much appreciated! Or advice, or pitfalls or pros and cons. We have a layout in mind, so I aren’t wanting to design from scratch with them. We’re set on what we are doing.

thank you!

They're great, I've used them a couple of times. Just need to remember absolutely everything for your order!

Excellent

I've used them for two kitchens, they've been great. Brilliant quality, preassembled units, no problems with customer service. I did all the measurements myself and designed the kitchen layout etc and it worked really well. We did forget to order a side panel for one of the tall units and only discovered it when the joiner was putting together the kitchen and when we contacted DIY kitchens they were great and sending it quickly and didn't charge an extra delivery fee for it from what I can remember.

It was much cheaper then Howdens etc, probably on a par with Ikea.

We would rate DIY very highly. After visiting a local showroom we saw a style of kitchen we liked and were quoted £20,000 (ten years ago), this price was just for the units, no appliances.

we saw the exact same units on the DIY website and bought all the units for about £14,000 😳

great quality, good service, everything arrived, NOTHING to complain about..would highly recommend

Just used DIY kitchens and it definitely came out 000s cheaper than howdens would have been. I’ve used IKEA before which was great for me at the time as nice and cheap and you could pay off at 0% over a few years. However, my builders were much happier with DIY kitchens.
i used Karen Wallace - a kitchen designer I read about on Mumsnet to make the plan and the shopping list. It wasn’t too expensive to use her services and definitely made the process easier (although possibly DIY kitchens have their own designers now, like ikea etc do?)

Thanks so much, it sounds like everyone has had a good experience.

Just keen to drill into the bit about remembering everything, and measuring ourselves, are they basically operating on a you measure, and you put together the kitchen process? As opposed to say somewhere like wren, or Howden’s where they take all the pressure of that?

Another very positive experience here. We were all set to go with either Howdens or Wren but ended up getting a solid wood DIY Kitchen for the same price as their MDF versions. We already had a plan but the designer at the DIY showroom gave us some great suggestions as to how to max out the space, which worked brilliantly. I also liked that their pricing is all upfront, which massively put me off Howdens.

Edit to say that yes, you're responsible for measuring (we took them our Wren plan) and we also used our own fitter. But so worth it as the quality was so much better. We bought upgraded appliances with the savings

Very good. We actually went up to their showroom as wanted to see the stuff in person. Very helpful. We did the design ourself and bought the worktops elsewhere. We also bought our appliances elsewhere. So the only thing we bought from them was their units.
We found the showroom well organised and was very useful to see the colours. Our new kitchen was installed about 8 years ago and no issues - decent quality for price. There is a few chips from where my nails hit when opening the fridge door. That is literally the only sign of wear.
Price wise re savings - I can't remember but it was a very good price. Delivery was when they said it would be - and the cupboards come made up so not all flat pack.

Our kitchen from DIY is beautiful. People always comment on it. You do have to measure yourself and they have a design tool. However, you send it to them and they check it for errors. The quality of the kitchen for the price is amazing. So everything arrives ready assembled-this would be the price of the very top ranges somewhere at Wren. Most of their ranges are flatpack. WE live an hour from the showroom which made it easier as we went down with our laptop just when it opened and talked it all through with them; they were really helpful as a company. For example, our build was delayed so we ended up storing the kitchen in our garagewhen we installed the sink was cracked--even though it was out of the returns period they sent another the next day. I can't stress how beautiful the kitchen is and what a good price it was. We were recommended them after seeing a friend's kitchen.

Thanks so much, for some reason measurements scare me a bit, but that’s partly because we are taking out an entire room, so won’t even know the specific measurements until the room is plastered etc.

But I guess depending on the lead time that could work. Just for comparison, we are currently looking at paying about £5500 for units only, and various other little in unit upgrades like corner unit spiral thing et. That’s through wrenching, like I say Howden‘s haven’t come back yet with new price, and magnet are still busy working on a new quote.

We intend to buy appliances, handles, and we already have stonework surfaces on order. So it really is cabinets only.

I guess what I’m saying is we’d need to think there would be a saving on a 12 cabinet kitchen from our lower price, or that the quality would be significantly more, maybe to take on the added stress of being in charge of the measurements!

I’m about to buy from them. New showroom in Oxford is really great; you can show your plan to staff and they can tweak it but not start from scratch. Online they now offer a design service for £25 which would help. Online planner is glitchy but possible with perseverance! Join the Facebook group that is solely DIY Kitchens as there is swathes of info there! Also a pinned post of designers who you can pay to do a full service design. Ours was Tony Ives, and Karen Wallace comes up a lot. Our design cost £250. You can have a bespoke colour, DIY will even send you a colour match door to check if you want! (I’ve been to the Yorkshire showroom too - both are great!)

(Just as a PS. The cabinets we are getting from rent are fully built, not Flat packed. I think we are in their infinity range, which is second from the top.)

I used them about ten years ago. I paid for John Lewis to come out to measure and design the kitchen - was about £50, I think then - and picked the kitchen from DIY kitchens. I found it a bit overwhelming trying to work out everything we needed, but sent them the plan and they sent me a list and I just ordered that. The kitchen was great - issues on a couple of doors, but they replaced them quickly when I raised it. Only thing that was actually annoying was that I got a tap from them, which was pretty cheap, but problematic quite soon after and ended up needing replacing - this was years ago though so they may not even use the same taps. However, that was a small issue and would definitely use them again. We got a wooden kitchen sprayed in Farrow and Ball colour - has lasted well. Can’t remember details of price, but thousands cheaper than anything similar I could find. The fact the cupboards come fitted and you just effectively slot them in also meant I could get my builder to reduce the fitting cost slightly too.

On the planner, just create a huge room and add all your units without worrying about placement, to give you an idea of cost. Or you can email your Wren plan to DIY and they will cost it up for you. Make sure it is ‘like for like’ on the range of course; solid wood painted vs foil wrapped mdf won’t compare!

We've used them twice now and have been very impressed. Definitely go to a showroom - it really helped us to make decisions and was great to see all the possible options.

My only (minor) gripe was that we were given a window of a week for delivery and really had to chase for information about exactly which day it would be. The delivery service was excellent though - make sure you have space to store all the cabinets before fitting them - they seemed to take up an awful lot of room before they're fitted!

The only reason that we didn't use them in the end was another company (not Wren) local to us near enough price matched them. Several friends have used DIY and their kitchens still look great 7/10 years on. Their aftercare was brilliant for them too (e.g inside of carcass had a scratch, replaced with no issue).

We used them and they were brilliant. Kitchen still looks great 6 years later. Really good quality units.

We even fitted it ourselves, although got an electrician to fit the induction hob.

Once it was fitted then DIY Kitchen's worktop fitter came out and fitted the quartz worktop for us.

I'd 100% recommend them. So much cheaper than our Magnet and Wren quote.

My aunt and uncle had a Wren kitchen fitted which does look brilliant but they had so many issues getting it fitted with things that were wrong. It was a lot of effort getting it right.

We were going to go with them for a current project- a friend used them and their showroom is excellent but I’ve heard some more mixed things, about their custom colours, delivery and customer service in particular, more recently and with all the faffing of using the planner yourself etc, we’ve gone for smile instead.

I used them before the website had a planner! I used graph paper & cut out the size of the cabinets I wanted & did it like that! Worked perfectly!
we ordered a couple of door samples because we weren’t going to the showroom.

i was abit confused about how many plinths & end pieces I needed so I emailed with the question & they emailed me straight back with the answer.
I love my kitchen, it’s 8 years old, wearing well!
Great experience all round!!

Go to the showroom! When we got our kitchen about 8 years ago, the difference in build quality between even the good Wren stuff and the basic DIY Kitchens units was really obvious. I don’t know if that’s still the case so you’re best going and having a look if you’ve done a basic price comparison as a PP suggested (ie just plonk equivalent units to what Wren have designed into a big empty virtual room on their online planner). We ended up getting the units with loads of extras like pull out larders/corner drawers, integrated bins, pan drawers, etc. for significantly less than just the standard empty units cost from Wren.

Are you using a builder or a kitchen fitter? When we've been getting quotes, we've been asking for views on DIY Kitchens and a couple of them have had recent bad experiences. The kitchens themselves have been good but if there are parts missing or damaged on arrival, it has been taking a very long time to rectify and then they've had to come back when they've already moved onto the next job etc. The builders we've spoken to were not against using DIY but said it might have a knock on effect on timing. Maybe see what the experience is of the guys you are using? They might be able to say whether they've seen something similar or if ours have been unlucky.

Had our last 2 kitchens from them. I would say that the recent cupboards don’t have such strong shelves as the first kitchen. They don’t bear the weight of plates etc so well. Their inside shelves used to be thicker. They are a lot cheaper, delivery was okay. We always go for built units.

We used them 5 years ago in a rental house with a good independent fitter who only uses that brand. We didn't visit but were sent sample doors.

While the rest of the house was well used by the tenants, chipped paint and so on as expected, the DIY kitchen we had installed was in really excellent condition.

This is all really useful, thank you so much, just to answer one comment we do have a joiner who will be fitting in the kitchen. I can definitely ask them what their thoughts might be!