got the howden's quote in...HOW MUCH?

[gussiegrips]

Have been trawling the board for months, am doing an extension...

including, giant kitchen. Smashing. Only, choosing taps and whatnot bores the pants off me - so, I took a top 3 from MN's advice, decided on Howdens. Builder likes them, gets a good discount, job done.

Very boring, cream, gloss units with integral handles. Inoffensive, easy to clean - sold.

Until...the quote came in. Now, allegedly, we are being given 75% discount. Which, on closer examination, is actually 25%.

unit doors are about £100, pan drawer unit is about £300. Really? Am I being totally naive - I hoped thought that it'd be about £200 all in, including the door.

I spoke to JL in the sales, and, oh, how we laughed when I realised the unit I was playing with was £300, without a door..."I'm not paying that for something to keep tins of beans in!"

Seriously? £400 a unit? In which I will house tins?

I fear I may have missed a point somewhere.

Blimey that's pretty terrifying. What are your other options? Our kitchen is from howdons and it wasn't that much (although 6 yrs ago)

We bought our kitchen carcasses from b&q. Got the doors made by someone advertising cupboard doors in the local paper, he had loads of styles and hundreds of colours to choose from.

B&q ones are flat pack so need assembling. But our kitchen is 12 years old and looks fine still. The kitchen door bloke did all the end panels and trims, etc to match the doors so you can't tell from the outside its a white cupboard.

Buy cheaper carcasses and get doors separately?

Ikea, all the way! We have done several renovations and used them. Much cheaper and the quality has been fine. My parents spent a fortune on a Homebase kitchen, the laminate on the doors buckled and they had to have a new set of doors. Never had a problem with ikea!

I agree with cheap units and more expensive doors n

oh, go with IKEA. I love our IKEA kitchen, and it didn't cost the earth - they have loads of options for different doors and handles so you can customise to your hearts content too.

Yes they are still ridiculous prices for what is essentially a few pieces of mdf with sticky plastic on. When I looked at the retail prices (without the '75%' discounts) in Howdens I asked the salesman why a very plain unit was of such quality it would cost £600+ pounds and he did lots of blustering, and we left.
IKEA/B&Q/Wickes all they way!

We bought B&Q basic cupboards and then got nice wooden worktops and handles plus more expensive tiles and sink/tap. It is worth having a look at B&Q, PIL have similar units from Homebase I think but they cost 5 X as much as ours and the quality is very similar.

I hate not being able to see the price on something like a Howden's kitchen.

Can you imagine looking at buying a car that way? Well the sticker price is £30k but your car dealer can get you up to 75% discount on it depending on how generous he feels towards you. Crazy.

I am having an Ikea kitchen, and I have done practically a whole year of research on cupboards, taps, sinks, floors, lighting, sockets, ovens, hobs, fridge freezers,worktops and paint.

Price wise the carcass compares to the likes of B&Q etc but the internal fittings are much cheaper and I want pull out drawers in a lot of the cupboards so that is a big deal for me.

I currently have a franken kitchen where I moved 3 years ago from a massive kitchen to a flipping tiny ting disproportionate to the rest of the house, so we bought some Ikea larder units and put them on the free wall and have been using those for 3 years. I love it.

I think it is crazy to pay loads of money for stuff, I feel that way about everything though from £600 handbags to rolex watches.

Don't buy cheap carcasses look online for rigid and then get doors.but 200 for a decent cupboard is not bad. Idea are good if your carpenter puts the together well and glues them aswell as screw

Not surprised. My sister got a quote from Howdens - via an old family friend who is a builder - and it was ridiculously expensive. V embarrassing as old family friend was v. offended we didn't want to use his suppliers. She got a much nicer kitchen at a far more reasonable price from IKEA, IIRC.

Our last house had an Ikea kitchen when we bought it. Not sure how old it was but we lived there 6 years and are just selling now. We put in a new work top and left all the units as is and the kitchen looks new and very nice. I will definitely think about them in the future. I loved my larder unit, so much storage. So yeah, ditch the expensive ones and go for Ikea!

thanks guys, after going to the store and speaking to their kitchen designer, all I can say is "hmmmm".

the prices and designs are totally fluid. I asked him why we needed x,y and z - "oh, no, we can easily take that out" I asked him why we didn't have x, y and z - "oh, that's not a problem, yep, we could do it that way"

So, in essence, we have designed our own kitchen.

The quote is utterly obscure. And, the chap just wasn't keen to explain the breakdown at all - very much "oh, you don't need to bother about that" Ehm, I think you'll find that I am bothered and that you will explain it to me, thanks.

I'm happier in that the kitchen is really nice and at least I can see where the charges are being applied - so, I can dump the £80 cutlery drawer, for instance.

The think I really like is that we're having an island (I don't care if they are passe, I want an island) and Howdens do 300mm cupboards with curved doors. So, that means I can have an oval shaped island - which means not bumping my massive hips on the corners at every turn.

I am clumsy. The idea of having rounded edges appeals. It also means the edges of the bit at the floor are flush - so, not a big dirt trap. I am not a very good housewife, easy-to-clean appeals too.

Am going to think about it. Without all the fancy, schmancy gubbings (am keeping my pan drawers, but the rest can be plain cupboards) then it's about £240 a unit, apart from the curved ones which are shocking. Still, even with that, the prices are now NOT what the original quote said.

It's always worth asking and politely insisting pn being treated like an adult and not some daft wee girl.

The lack of transparency in pricing was one of the reasons we didn't even bother looking at Howdens or similar.

Look online at ikea as you can compare.

Also try a different builder who uses howdens - you might get a better discount?

I am another who isnt going to bother even going to Howdens as I want to know what the cost breakdown is.
I think that you cant beat IKEA for price but am put off by lack of service and the fact it is too far away for us I think.

The lack of transparency in howdens prices drove me insane - well it drove me to ikea anyway. It's such a pain, you really can't find anything out about what you are getting, they just expect you to have what they think. It's very paternalistic. And eye wateringlt expensive.

We are having ikea units and everything else sourced from the Internet. We can see the prices and plan as we go. Howdens need to change their game plan and stop treating the end users like idiots IMHO!

Have you spoken to the builder about the price?

We have a Howdens high gloss kitchen and we are very happy with it. It has been in 8 years now and still looks perfect, despite heavy use. Very easy to clean and does not damage so, in my opinion, Howdens are worth the money.

I was horrified by the price of kitchens so started doing some shopping around. We bought the main carcass from ebay, sourced doors, handles from a local fair thing, appliances from various places, tiles end of line from homebase, worktops through Howden's (dh's grandad is a builder and got them for us) etc etc. We currently have a fridge in our kitchen and nothing else. We gutted it yesterday. Over the week we are putting in our new kitchen. We have spent £700 so far and all we have left to get it a thingybob for the light, a pipe and 2 sheets of plasterboard.

After much deliberation, we went with howdens.

Fairly big kitchen, with solid oak work tops & butler sink for £5300, iirc. We got 75% discount on everything.

The quote from Wickes was £22k!

Really pleased with the kitchen, it looks fabulous.

They are lovely btw. Howden's that is. DH's grandad uses them exclusively and they do some beautiful kitchens. I'm not made from gold is all.

Mind you, I didn't seem to have the same experience as others on here. We chose what we wanted and designed the kitchen with the builder. Howdens simply helped to put it together.

Also we knew the price of it all too, and so knew what we could cut to lower the price etc.

I think a lot of that comes down to your relationship with the builder.

I fitted a howdens kitchen in a flat about 10 years ago for an elderly lady.Solid oak and great price and quality and it was still there look=ing perfect when she came to sell about a year ago

Our builder has recommended Howdens. Do you mind me asking how much the full quote was?