New kitchen - how long did you spend choosing one?

[wildfellhall]

My kitchen fitter said to me not to "over think" the choice.

It slightly pissed me off.

It's a huge expense on a complicated mixture of choices. If I get it wrong it will really annoy me for years.

It's a lot of money to make fast decisions isn't it?

The worktop decision itself is huge as I feel like we should go light for the room but dark for the tea, coffee, curry stain potential.

Also the turmoil and trauma of them actually starting the work......

We took about 6 months over planning ours. But I agree with not overthinking individual aspects too much, there are so many choices and decisions to be made. The layout is the big one, that took us ages to finally get right.

We went light quartz for the worktops BTW and no stain problems 3 tears down the line.

Light quartz here, really bounces light around, no stains that bar keepers friend can’t sort and we cook curries with turmeric a lot….

we started with what annoyed us about previous kitchen, the pinch points and got 3 designs drawn up by 3 different companies. We then looked at how much crap w3 had to work out how many cupboards and drawers we needed.

but to a certain extent….not stressing too much is good advice.

Whatever you do, don't have light grout on the floor tiles (if you tile the floor), and preferably not light floor tiles either.

Don't ask me how I know, I just know.

Thank you, I appreciate the advice!

Yes we had three designs by three companies, one was by far better than the other two and the designer was great at talking it all through and making tweaks with us.

Where you get it from is really important. We got ours from DIY kitchens and it looks brand new 6 years later.

As someone who's new kitchen is about to start I am with you OP

All decisioned out! And now we're so close and can't change it I have really cold feet and feel anxious rather than excited.

SO many choices.

Ages! It's a big spend and I wanted to get it right.
We ended up going with laminate worktops which saved a ton of money.
We spent more on double neff slide and hide ovens, getting electricity tunnelled to the island, good lighting both spotlights around the outside and a feature light in the middle.
I went to several different kitchen places and got them to each do me a design which was useful and I used the best of each.

I'm getting cold feet about the fitter....!

The fire is most important. Even a cheap kitchen can be made to look awesome by a decent fitter.

Have you signed the contract?
If not, makes sense to take a step back to consider carefully if this is the right one for you.
You'll be living with the choices for a long time.

4 years. Four. I lived with a few random chests of drawers, half a sink no oven no hob for four years. But now I’ve got the most fabulous kitchen, I love it. I think I’ve had it for 3 years now. Don’t use a fitter you are not happy with. Just don’t. If you are in East Mids I know a couple of v good ones.

before we started i knew the overall vibe i wanted (wooden doors, not shaker style, dark worktop, no island as i want the space to be v flexible) and when we started getting designs done the placement of the door and the very large window meant there was then limited choice in terms of overall layout.

it's still taken us about 3 goes with the kitchen company/designer (howdens) we opted for to get the layout the way we want it - or as close as possible while sticking to our budget!

we're putting in something that is absolutely not on trend but i think we'll be happy with it, hopefully getting fitted in about ten days time (part of a bigger rebuild/refurbishment).

That kitchen fitter sounds patronising and I agree with others, get one whose not so irritating

Thank you, it's helpful to hear advice and to be a bit cautious; it's a huge amount of money and it will irritate me for so long if I rush decisions because I'm being offered half price if I decide in a week.

I'm also trying to imagine a time when we can cope with no kitchen!

We thought about it for years, visiting kitchen shops was my favourite hobby. but couldn’t afford, so by the time we could, the design was in my head ready to go, and we just needed a designer to put it on paper and make sure it worked. We’ve gone for white quartz worktops and I’m going to buy some silicone worktop protectors that roll up to use if we’re cooking anything that might stain. The fitter is the most important part IMHO, we had quotes from loads before we settled on one we liked.

it’s starting in three weeks. Cannot wait. We’re putting a small section of the old worktop on the dining table to protect it, then with the microwave, air fryer, slow cooker and a washing up bowl I reckon we’ll manage just fine.

We started in January. Fitting is now booked for September. We had 3 different companies design and quote. We've gone with a local company. In the end it worked out about £2k more expensive than the larger high-street companies and they are taking care of everything from plumbing to electrics, flooring and plastering and making the cabinetry to suit our needs. Seemed a small price for peace of mind!