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!

The plastering course went well though I wouldn't claim to be an expert.

The bathroom is going very slowly

I'm having to strip off the original (black) plaster down to the breeze blocks. It's laborious and mucky work. I hired an electric tile remover which was brilliant at getting the tiles off quickly, but weighed 5.5kg, so was knackering to use. Tried to use it on the plaster but just ended up digging big holes in the walls

In order I would do things this way in a kitchen;

Take everything out, inc skirting boards. Mark up where you want the electrical sockets to go. Same with gas and any other services.

Have wiring, water and gas done.
Re plaster, then refit skirting boards
Paint ceiling and put up lights
Fit units and electrical stuff
Tile
Fit sockets
Paint
Floor
Fit kick boards

Whether this is correct or not I don't know, but it seems the most logical way to me.

I'm currently trying to source a cheap toilet. Thought I'd got one for 99p from eBay, but the seller sold it privately instead

why did the plaster have to come off?

A club hammer and bolter will usually take off plaster. If it is loose a garden spade is quicker.

The black stuff has to come on on 3 of the walls as it is really soft and crumbly.

So basically there's breeze blocks, then black plaster, then a layer of finishing plaster which is really loose and crumbly, as is the black stuff underneath.

Strangely though one wall appears to be fine and not at all crumbly!

It's a 1930s semi.

The thing is, when you start doing work you never know what has gone on beforehand. We have been here 11 years. The people before us we here 18months and basically just painted everything white, even the bathroom tiles. Which were truly disgusting, and had started to fall off the walls. They looked like 1970s tiles.

I found when we did our kitchen, difficulty booking trades to come for the small jobs when we required them.

I started a thread the other day but topworktops.co.uk are fantastically priced for wooden worktops. Our joiner was very impressed!

Wickes do a perfectly presentable loo for £45 including all the innards. Have you tried checking your tip? Ours has a section for sanitary ware and people are encouraged to take them away if useful.

£45!

That's more than I paid for the bath (with tap and flexi couplings) and the sink put together

We don't have a tip, we have a recycling centre, but we're not allowed to take stuff from it (which is bloody stupid IMO)

Soaccidentprone - where did you get them from???

Thanks for the link re topworktops - they are a good price!!

That's daft! Ours is a recycling centre too, and they only get funny if you actually start diving into the skips, which of course I have never hardly ever done.