Kitchen Help

[tellelle]

So we are thinking about redoing the kitchen and I am absolutely dreading...

Firstly for the fact we will have no kitchen for god knows how long and secondly due to the cost.

We have quite a big kitchen/dining room and the work will involve bricking in an external door.

I was just wondering if anyone could help me with the process? To save cost we are going to get our own plasterer, fitter, plumber, electrician etc.. I'm just unsure what order we would get each trade in? Also will this even save us money???

Any advice welcome!

We did what you are suggesting - the builder who removed a wall and vaulted a ceiling for us did the plaster boarding and plastering (he brought a plasterer with him).

Once the initial work was done - crumbling plaster was taken back to brick - the electrician and plumber did the first fix. Then the room was plastered - we had everywhere skimmed - and the electrician and plumber did the second fix adding switches, sockets and light fittings and the radiators were re-hung.

We painted before the new kitchen was fitted which was well worth it as it's much easier to paint a blank wall in an empty room than cut round all the units. The builder lent us a scaffolding tower so we could reach to apex of the vaulted ceiling.

Then we had a kitchen fitter fit the kitchen, the flooring was laid by a flooring fitter and the kitchen fitter, who is a joiner, fitted new skirting boards which I then caulked.

We bought everything online and DP project managed, co-ordinating everyone. That's the tricky part and if you have a tight timescale it might be worth using a company that can do everything for you as it will be quicker.

@wowfudge thank you for your response. I will bear all of that in mind..

Did it work out cheaper to do it this way for you?

The quotes for fitting through Wren etc are very high

Yes, it was cheaper. We had a quote from Magnet which was for £30k to supply and fit the kitchen. Half of that cost was the units with a 75% discount. We tried to negotiate with them as we liked the design but the only cost reduction was by removing things from the design!

In the end we bought the kitchen from DIY kitchens for £8.5k, which included some additional units due to a mix up with the plumbing location for the island.

Overall the whole project including absolutely everything cost the same as the Magnet quote for supplying and fitting just the kitchen.