Would we be bankrupted by a Smallbone kitchen?

[DougalTheCheshireCat]

Hello all. We're planning to move out kitchen to the room behind the living room and knock through (not take the whole wall down, a double width door though). It will make our home much more family friendly (got a young dc).

What's tricky though, is the new kitchen room has something on each of the four walls (chimney which we will likely hollow out, window, existing door, new opening to living room).

Makes me wonder whether a bespoke option like Smallbone would enable us to maximise storage etc the best in multiple corners etc. but I've no idea if we could afford it.

We've a budget of around £20-25,000 including appliances. Smallish room as London house (about 3.5 x 4.5 metres)

Would we get laughed out of the shop. If not, are they good / worth it?

There was a thread recently about a v poorly installed smallbone kitchen recently. Will see if I can find it for you.

I think they average around the £60k mark. I bet loads of other companies can maximise your space at lower cost, unless you really the smallbone style?

really want

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/property/a2255734-Smallbone-Kitchen-Disaster

Here you go. This put me off smallbone, I must say.

I think your budget is way below Smallbone. I suggest a good modern ook good quality kitchen. If you buy in the sales now on in January you will get a discount. We bought a Wickes kitchen (Caledonia range). Good service and they fitted it in a very tricky space. We spent the money on good granite and taps and top of the range appliances.

Ok we could not do 60k! That's more the budget for the whole project. We've had wickes do a design, they were not that helpful on layout. But maybe once we've figured that out for ourselves we could push them on getting halve sizes and those smaller pull out thingys etc to use the space well etc.

No don't particularly want Smallbone style. It's more finding a range with options and/ or designers prepared to think through the detail of where appliances, cupboards, drawers etc should go and how to make best use of gaps left. Hence I wonder whether a bit of 'bespoke' would help. We likely have a couple of non standard size gasps where we'll want to build in cupboards / drawers to fit that are still in the kitchen style.

No help whatsoever but I used to 'see' a bloke who was a carpenter / kitchen fitter for smallbone! He was a really fantastic shag!! . Wish I'd got him to fit a kitchen for me before I got rid.
Sorry - as I say, no help at all

John Lewis, they did our kitchen many years ago and were fine.

Get a carpenter to do your kitchen. If you are in Central/South/East London I could recommend one, he has a website with pictures of his work.

The quality is good imo but they are very inflexible and really if you're not planning on selling your house and using it as a selling point then really why bother. I chose not to get one and went for a smaller, very flexible company when I had the option (many years ago). Still do not regret it though did like the quality of Smallbone my alternative and cheaper one weathered just fine too.

Try John Lewis kitchens - I had a very small kitchen and I needed v deep cupboards - I thought their room designs were great.

Coffee bean, that is a good idea. We're north (but central) london so would appreciate the carpenter details. I will pm you in the morning.

We've got john Lewis to do a design too. They are better than wickes but we're not there yet. We've rethought the layout after a weekend of tiring things out in the space so we've just emailed him a sketch and asked him to draw it up for us, so we'll see...

Blimey, crikey Blimey! Good for you ??

Smallbone are really expensive and very acquired taste. There are lots of high street kitchen companies who could do hand buit bespoke, or find a really good joiner.

Go to a local independent & see what they can offer. I can hugely recommend one if you are in East Sussex.

We got fairly cheap units but they chopped them around to make a perfect fit & I have the kitchen of my dreams.

When you say John Lewis do you mean of hungerford? Or John Lewis as in partnership?

If you want a 'hand built' look I've used Unfitted Kitchens - they do lots of free standing units as well but the b uilt in ones get delivered and you would need a builder to fit them. Other options for saving money are M & S, Ikea and Habitat - all do free standing options which I think can work really well for either a contemporary look or a more traditional one. I've also used antique pine cupboards in mine for a country look.

I used this company/designer though they were under a different name at the time (15 + years ago) I can still remember being very impressed by the ideas and things I hadn't thought of. I had been to a few companies and while some were good some were bottom-of-the-pit awful - there seemed to be a huge disparity in standards that was not reflected in prices.

We looked (briefly) at Smallbone, but ended up with a Stoneham kitchen. 9 years later and and it still (when clean) looks like new and is super solid even though the pan drawers are full of Le Creuset pans and the pull out larders are crammed full. It does all depend on the fitters, though - so I would be inclined the find them first, by recommendation if at all possible.

Price range for stoneham, stealth? I like the look of one of their range.

Um...not sure I can remember! Our whole budget for a large kitchen which was stripped back to bare brick and concrete was less than the number mentioned for a Smallbone one, though, so definitely less than that. Ours is one of the "Heritage" ones, in oak.

It's worth a look into then, I don't really want to spend more than £40k but our kitchen/living is open plan so need to get it right, am willing to stretch budget. Thanks stealth.

Definitely worth looking at as an option, if you can find a good local fitter. Our kitchen designer was OK, the Stoneham units are beautifully built and solid as anything, but it was the fitters who made it all fit beautifully to our ancient wonky walls and who made sure that when the designer had added up wrong and ordered the wrong bits that they were swapped without cost to us. Having never done anything like it before, I had no real idea until after the fact quite how lucky we were in our fitters.

John Lewis the department store in my case.