How to do a new kitchen cheaply?

[Quodlibet]

Can anyone inspire me with their cheap kitchen refit tales?

So our current kitchen is a bit of a disaster - cheapy IKEA jobby very badly installed, horrid floor, bad design, shoddy plastering etc.

Design challenges are it's a tiny room with the boiler in one corner (hard to build around) and it's hard to work out how to make more of the space. The grim stone floor tiles (which have been painted black - why?! - and only laid up to the edges of the units) will have to come out and be replaced with something else.

We are super-limited on the ££ front and this will probably not be our forever home - there is no point us shelling out loads, but I'd like to update it to something a bit less infuriating and grim than it currently is.

To keep costs down we can keep appliances which are pretty OK. There would be a pretty small number of units to buy if we did buy new units. We could easily do the putting together bit of IKEA carcasses for example, plus labour, painting, maybe tiling at a push.

So my questions are:

• how to do it cheaply?
• who do I need to help me design and fit it? If I move the gas oven, for example, I imagine I will need a gas fitter?
• would moving the boiler to get a better use of the kitchen space push the cost up massively?

Any ideas very gratefully received. Thanks!

hi ! moving gas involves a gas fitter and will push the budget up - moving the boiler too - as this isn't your forever home - why not look on free cycle / gumtree / eBay for either ex display cabinets or second hand cabinets or one off retro pieces - the key is choose something that you can paint ! ie a cathedral oak door - lots of people are replacing theses for shaker style - so there's loads on eBay / freecycle etc - painted with smart new handles - these can look really cool !! ikea do a fee online planner - this can help - or stretch your budget and have a oroffessional design . will add a link to Houzz for you - have a look at the photos on there to be inspired ! if you look on the design dilemma section you will see loads of people who repaint their oak kitchens too !!
www.houzz.com

I'm in a similar position :/ Only I've already started destroying the kitchen I need to put a new one in cheaply as it wasn't budgeted for and we are likely to rent this place out within a year, so don't want to be too precious about it.

I've been looking on eBay but I'm a little nervous about ordering something so expensive & such a big thing to do/install sight unseen...eeek.

We have just (almost) done ours and a big utility shed has been fitted out as part of the costing. Its handmade solid units, with painted frames and doors. The draws are all solid. We have a mix of cream corian and oak worktops. A corian sink, fancy pull out tap, steam combi samsung split oven and open shelving.

Its cost around £1000 with us doing the labour.

The units and two 2m bits of corian were £175 off ebay.

The paint, primer and sandpaper came to about £75.

The oak 900mm wide by nearly 3m was £110 delivered.

The oven came with cashback was my big splurge but came in at £525 from John Lewis.

The sink was another ebay find. New but didn't fit only £25.

Fancy tap £34.

Wood for shelves was around £50 (plywood cut to size at B&Q) we've colour matched to the units using the same paint.

I'm in the middle of doing our bathroom in a very tight budget as dh has just been made redundant

Bought from eBay

Bath £50
Tiles £11
Basin £14
Towel rail (to replace the radiator) £18

The flooring is left over from ds1s bedroom which was done about 3 years ago

I'm doing a plastering course on Saturday, and did a plumbing course a couple of weeks ago.

So what I am trying to say is it is possible to do things on a budget if you shop around.

It also helps to be immensely practical though

Wow Mis, you did well! :) I would love to be able to do it for £1k

Were they shops or private sellers on eBay? Is it all new or are bits used?

soaccidentprone I'd love to hear how your plastering course goes. I have been looking for one, but I can only find ones for 6 weeks!!

Are your things for the bathroom new or used/shop or private seller.

I have scoured eBay - why am I so crap at finding bargains???

Ikea and do everything yourself that you can. Then find a reliable handyman to do the bits you can't and pay him on a day rate, then find a nice gas man to charge you for the hour or so it will take him to move the pipes and plug in your gas hob. Moving the boiler is fiendishly expensive, we have to shift ours and its adding a grand to the cost of our extension.

I find loads of stuff on eBay, in fact I find it quite difficult to bring myself to buy stuff new...

I'm pretty practical I think - I replaced the loo myself ... does that count?

I wanted to move my gas meter - it's in a fecking stupid place in the kitchen. It was going to cost me £3k so it's having to stay put .

Our kitchen units and the corian were lightly used, ripped out of a big house for a change of style. The sink, oven, tap and oak all new.

Lots of time but not particularly skill in sanding down, lightly filling where necessary and repainting the units.

There are a few other costs I should probably mention on reflection. We had the kitchen rewired and replastered. The plasterer was about half a day plus materials so about £130. Rewiring was part of the whole house rewire. The whole house and utility shed with new fuse boxes inside and out was £1500.

The flooring is a continuation of laminate we redid the whole downstairs.

We did out bathroom off ebay too. Our Bath was £75 (new). Taps that fill through the overflow £25.

Time is the thing with finding ebay bargains. I've spent four months sourcing stuff for my current house. Maybe half an hour a day on ebay for that time with targeted searching. I ask sellers lots of questions if the listing isn't clear, to be sure I'm buying what I want.

Thanks Mis. Have you had any disappointments? Just watching some 'used' kitchens on eBay. Tempting.

The kitchen we purchased had far more units than we needed so we could pick the best fit. We ended up fitting out a lean too shed as a utility and put tall cupboards in the dining room as they were too good not to use.

I had one disappointment with a tap that didn't fit a small sink for the downstairs toilet. At £9 it didn't hurt too much.

I did visit the kitchen to view with the cash in my pocket ready to put down - which we did and fortunately the seller kindly held off other buyers once we'd made the appointment.

Lightly used bath, original 1930's basin, new towel radiator. Bath came with taps and flexible pipes. I bought the taps from b&q about 7 years ago in the sale. Tiles are new. Sellers dw changed her mind about the colour!

It takes patience and time to find bargains. And be willing to travel, but not so far that it is uneconomical. It also helps to have access to a van.

I'll let you know how the course goes. I hope I don't find it too difficult.

So be flexible in what you are looking for. Try different search variations and sort by distance. Also check sellers feedback, and if in doubt don't buy. Better to be safe than sorry when on a tight budget.

Good luck

Could you get away with just changing the doors, handles, sinks, taps and worktops as there are some great companies who do these and can make your kitchen like new. I did this for the property I now rent and wired really well and managed to renovate kitchen for £600.

We also sold our old kitchen (house we live in) on Ebay for under £200 including fitted fridge freezer!! The units were in immaculate condition and still very modern. We just wanted a total redesign. Definitely keep on eye on Ebay for something to come up. It's also worth asking any builders you know if they know of anyone getting rid of their kitchen as our friend did his kitchen from a kitchen he took out on a job he had.

To work out how many units and worktops etc you need use the free tool on ikea although I have a feeling that ikeas units may be a slightly different width from other standard sizes so just check that first.

Good luck!!

And you can always build open shelves reasonably cheaply.

im in a council place and theyre supposed to update kitchens but not for a couple of years and i dont know how long well be here. units are not too bad, but worktops are mottled blue and euck!

contac paper wont work so was thinking of getting cheap vynil planks in pine and sticking them on worktops....would that work? planks are thicker and wont bubble up like contac would and would make kitchen lightewr and cleaner looking?

used these planks on the baseboards and it immediately lifted the look.

plus a lick of paint and dad had loads of white tiles going spare so just stuck them over the existing awful ones. best i could do.

Wow loads of inspiring ideas here. Well impressed by MissForMum and soaccidentprone.

I am good at sourcing bargains off ebay and have thought about repurposed units. Where I need help is the fitting. One of the major issues with our current kitchen is it is badly fitted and just looks proper shoddy - loads of cut corners/bad workmanship, and the units are peeling and in some places missing doors/kickboards etc. I don't think a revamp will cut it, particularly as the floor really needs to go!

IKEA stuff can look really good if fitted well - some of the £500k houses estate agents dragged me round had 'wow' kitchens which were just IKEA with nice handles and well designed.
Plasterers are always worth money.

Figure out what size units you want where and see if you can find free or cheap carcasses and and countertop.

I can't just replace the doors either. The base units aren't in good condition now & when they were put in they just put several 1000 units around the walls, no corner cupboards etc Massive amounts of space wasted and it's a small kitchen - no space to waste!

The quality of fitting makes the greatest difference. See if you can get a recommendation for a skilled joiner who is willing to do kitchens. Mine has a day rate of about £140 and can do a very neat and accurate job.

Kitchen fitting companies habitually charge a lot because people expect a new kitchem to be expensive and plenty of them are willing to pay a high price. They are notorious for shoddy and non-compliant plumbing and electrical work, so put some of your savings towards getting a good local pro to do those important parts. Do your own very accurate and detailed plans well in advance. Measure the position of every pipe, switch and socket.

Personal recommendation is vital.

Websites paid by the trader are untrustworthy as you have no may of knowing how many of the glowing testimonials are writen by the traders and their chums.

If you see a tradesman's van outside a neighbour's house, ask for a card. Go back to the house after a few weeks and see what the householder says. Get in the habit of doing this even when you aren't looking for someone. Householders usually like telling you how good the job was (or spreading tales of woe.)

These are all great tips.

So say I design the thing myself, source cheap cupboards (this is not likely to be the expensive bit as there is room for so bloody few units) I am imagining I need:

• a joiner
• a plumber (I'm guessing if I keep my fittings in the same place possibly not for much)
• a gas fitter? (presuming built-in gas hob will have to come out then go in again)
• a spark?? (we could probably get away without rewiring - not particularly keen on opening that can of worms as I am pretty sure whole house could do with a rewire)

Who rips ups the current horrendous floor tiles, levels and does the new floor?
What order do I get people in?

yes, built-in gas hobs do not have flexible or unpluggable connectors, so need to be piped and connected by a gas-safew person. You want the worktop yo be in place and cut out, but the job need not be screwed dow.

plumber may want to do piping prep after the old cabs have been pulled out, and final connections after the units are in place, with the worktop cut out for the sink, but, again, sink not yey scrrwed dow,

If you wiring is poor, a competent electician can usually rewire just the kitchen, providing sockets, appliance switches, and cooker connections in case you or a future person want an electric cooker. It is nowadays considered quite good practice to run a dedicated circuit into the kitchen.

It is even better to have additional dedicated circuits for the freezer so that a fault such as an RCD trip on some other appliance will not cause all your frozen food to melt. The circuits will need to be fitted with RCBOs which cost a little extra but are used in superior installations. If your electrician quibbles or doesn't understand, find a better one. The wiring is best done after removal of old kitchen and before inastalling the new one. The walls will need to be chased out. Draw your cabinets and appliance positions on the wall with chalk. A double socket every metre along the wall, 150mm above the worktop, is not excessive, with an appliance switch in the same row to feed an unswiitched socket outlet below the worktop, in every position where you expect to have an appliance, or might one day change your mind and decide to put an appliance. my own kitchen has an electric cooker point on both sides of the room, in case of future replans, and also a gas outlet on both sides.

Remember the wiring for the cooker extractor hood, and lamps on the ceiling and below the wall cabinets. Avoid downlighters and spotlights uinless for some reason you want your kitchen to have puddles of bright light in a dimly lit room.

There are people who think that switches and sockets should be hidden out of sight. I judge this as being equivalent to putting bloomers on piano legs. If you want to use it you have to be able to see it. An object which performs a useful function is nothing to be ashamed of.

As you said you're super limited ££ front, you need to cut down cost on kitchen materials, products, labour and on many factors you can. The cost to labour can be a big part of the budget for kitchen remodeling. By supplying your own labour, or properly making your kitchen for the professional manpower you hire, you may be able to minimize the cost. I ended up remodeling with these RTA cabinets that helped me to cut down the cost significantly.

Thanks - is there a UK equivalent to the RTA store do you know?

I can do things like accurate drawings, assembling cabinets, getting creative with repurposing used cabinets etc and can happily disassemble old kitchen, fill and sand and paint etc; what I lack is tradesmen and tradesmen knowledge to do all the fiddly bits like gas and plumbing, work tops and new floor, and am struggling to work out what order you do things and what order you get tradespeople in...