Would you spend 30-40k plus on a kitchen?

[crystalgall]

We are in the process of buying a house. The needs to be completely rnovated which I am excited about including a new kitchen.

I really love the grey/blue shaker kitchen look but my god some companies are so expensive. However it doesn't seem like you can get the same look with IKEA/howdens etc. Also we are utterly inexperienced in building works/DIY so want someone to come and do all the measurements/design etc and just have it fitted. Minimal faff on our part.

I want to know if it's worth it? It's our forever house pretty much and I cook everyday. The kitchen will be part of a big open plan space too. These are some of the companies I've looked at. Bloody gorgeous kitchens.

Sola
Devol
Tom howley
Harvey jones
John Lewis of Hungerford
Second nature kitchens

So would you spend that much on a kitchen? Have you?

We've just spent in total about £7k on a kitchen - this included plumbing work and electrician and flooring. We already have appliances though so not counting them.

We got ours from here
http://thefreestandingkitchen.com

We paid a bit more than we would have done if we'd gone to IKEA but it's just our style and it's a solid wood kitchen; we figured it was worth spending a bit more.

A new shiny kitchen with the latest gadgets will sell a house, but a dated kitchen will look like a job that needs to be done, however much money you spend. It's not just cupboard styles that change, but fashions in storage, fridges and ovens.

I honestly think that some kitchens just don't date, depending on the style, and shaker is one of them, especially if it's hand-painted as you can always update the colour and the hardware which ARE the things that date. I would post a picture of my last kitchen but it will out me! It was done about 7 years ago and I had it re-painted about 18 months ago. Still looks utterly amazing.

I'm going to have something very similar to the attached photo, but with grey cabinets and an amazing light marble type stone (but it's not marble which would be foolish). I think it's very classic and will not date but may be deluded and I simply cannot wait!

If I were buying a high gloss modern kitchen though, I wouldn't spend as much - I'd get Ikea or Magnet or something as the quality of these is good. I had a German high gloss kitchen previous to my shaker kitchen and loved it too.

I would not want that kitchen, dark.

That does not make it a bad kitchen, and it's a great kitchen for you if you love it. You may love that kitchen for the next 40 years. However, it wouldn't add more to the value of your house than any other kitchen that was well proportioned, inoffensive and clean.

Merrymouse I think that depends on the price bracket of the house and what buyers in that bracket expect. Having just sold a house (exchanged yesterday whoop whoop) I now know that my old kitchen was one of the key selling points of the house and that EVERY buyer who viewed raved about it.

So I'm quite comfortable about it.

uk.pinterest.com/pin/2533343510764089/

This is our kitchen. It cost 4,000 pounds, plus I spent 1,000 on a Smeg fridge. It's solid wood, I designed it myself and got a local kitchen company to make it. I love it.

I don't think you need to spend ten times that amount to get something you love, if you use your creativity.

That is gorgeous. well
Done to you!!!

I'm not convinced that a £30-40k kitchen adds £30-40k more to the value of a house than an identical house next door with a similarly styled but cheaper kitchen.

Op- I think in your situation you should go in to a showroom and get some help.

I got quotes from 3 companies. 2 came in at around £20-25k
They were a bit more modern

Harvey Jones will be about £35k.
I like plain and sleek so went for their linear range.
Bit like this, but with painted cupboards
Quality stood out for me.
The designers will help you.

Mine has had endless patience while I worked out cupboard space and where the mugs are going etc.

If I could afford it, heck yeah. I love cooking.

Just make sure you have plenty of lighting in your new units to shine down on the work surfaces.

If you've got the money and like to cook then I think it's worth buying an expensive kitchen because it won't fall apart with use so quickly. My PILs have a Poggenpohl kitchen they put in 30-40 years ago, it 's well used and obviously looking tired now but style wise it's still acceptable (unlike my Mum's pine units she had put in 20 years ago that dated within minutes of her putting them in). But PILs are architects so went for something that was plain and minimalist rather than something that was fashionable. Good quality simple white units will not date.

I'm not convinced that a £30-40k kitchen adds £30-40k more to the value of a house than an identical house next door with a similarly styled but cheaper kitchen.

As darkblueeyes has said, that really depends upon the value of the house. You'd be foolish to put a cheap kitchen in an expensive house.

Ok. I have a (probably really stupid. Sorry) question.

How come in the howdens/wickes range you can see the grain of the wood. But with the others you can't. Just been ogling a Tom howley kitchen and realised you can't see wood grain. It just looks like Matt wood.
Like I said prob a very silly question but anyone?

I do think obviously I'm just going to have to have lots and lots of visits to showrooms and quotes done.

I like the idea of getting a cheaper kitchen and then trying to make it look nicer with worktops/handles/lighting etc but at the moment like I said nothing I've seen has caught my fancy

There's MDF and real wood, broadly speaking. I gather if you see the grain it's either real wood or MDF masquerading as real wood.

I think MDF can be done well. You just need to avoid the doors that are formed of pieces to create the illusion of bevelling - that looks terrible.

S the Tom Howley not real wood then? I was sure it was. Need to
Go back and check.
But actually all the expensive ones don't have that grainy effect and I'm pretty sure most of them are real wood

There are expensive-ish MDF kitchens. My John Lewis of Hungerford is MDF, I think that's possibly mid-range though.

I have no idea if you can get real wood cheaply, I had my heart set on a painted shaker kitchen and headed straight to JLH for mine where the real wood ones are very expensive.

Have you looked at the other John Lewis? I doubt they're cheap but might be cheaper.

I also think you could get whatever look you want for less from a good carpenter.

I think there's a few trolls in this thread...

Crystalgall, Tom Howley definitely ARE real wood. Like most high end kitchens they are tulipwood around the outside with an MDF panel in the middle to prevent any warping and cracking. The reason you can't see the grain is that tulip wood is not a "grainy" wood, whereas ash, which is cheaper and used by high street companies such as Wren etc, DOES have a visible grain. I personally do not like the grain look and prefer a smooth painted surface, but this is a matter of taste.
-DON'T get an MDF kitchen. In my last house, they got a carpenter to put in a "wood" kitchen which I soon found was veneer/mdf and which started to come apart at the top of the cupboards fairly quickly. It was cheap and it looked cheap and I loathed it and resented having to replace a kitchen in a £2m + house. MDF + water = disaster, no matter what they might promise about water resistant MDF. Plus the leading edge always looks textured like chipboard, no matter how well painted IMHO.

I have been researching kitchens for months now (plus have put two kitchens in previous houses) and while I'm not an expert, I think I've got a sound knowledge base.

Another factor that impacts on price is whether the shaker is in frame or lay on construction. The kitchens from Tom Howley, Martin Moore etc are in frame, which means the doors sit in a frame. It's about 20% cheaper to build a lay-on kitchen, where the door sits on top of the carcass, than it is to do in-frame, so high street kitchen chains rarely do in-frame. The Wickes one linked to above is lay on style. I chose lay-on for my previous kitchen as I preferred the look at the time (and it was cheaper than Harvey Jones which I had also got quotes from), but now I want in-frame, just for a change!

I really believe that how much you spend should relate to the value of your house. I got a carpenter to put MDF units in a flat and got a granite offcut and that was perfect (still not happy with the MDF finish) for that price bracket. However, in a £2m+ house it just isn't appropriate and people DO notice the difference in quality - round my area, the kitchen manufacturer is often listed in the house details on Rightmove etc! Unless you do an Ikea or similar hack as beautifully done above then it may be better to go as high end as you're comfortable with.

Crystallgall if you are West London I can tell you who did my last kitchen - they are Richmond based and reasonable price although their service is not the best - too busy I think. Happy to share my findings - I've got four companies quoting on my latest one. PM me if you want.

Sorry jeremy what do you mean?

Thank you dark that helps.

Do you mean a wood door but with MDF panel in between the door panel?

Yes I do. The centre bit is usually MDF and the outside bits are solid wood. I was surprised but they all do it and on checking the documents my old kitchen was like it too!

We were definitely not going for a Tom Howley kitchen. It was far too expensive and we were just going to copy the look and get it done by a carpenter or cheaper company out of London. Then we went to their showroom and all the little touches were just so much nicer. And we got the same design priced up by a few other places and the difference was not as much as we thought it would be (we did sign up with a deposit in the sale though). I loved the idea of getting a local carpenter, but round here (London) it wasn't any cheaper!

Generally, Tom Howley have solid wood frames and drawers, but MDF fronts or veneer if you are having wood. We questioned this as we couldn't understand how they could charge so much for MDF when other companies used wood. This was their response.

"1. We use Tulip wood/ Popler for our cabinet fames This is a hardwood which is very smoothed grained and accepts the paint extremely well. The door is made up of Tulip wood and MDF. Again both take the paint well to allow us to achieve one of the best paint finishes on the market.

1. The carcass is made up of moisture resistant MDF with a ‘A’ Grade oak veneer over the surface with then solid oak edge. The two top material are MDF and plywood. However, if plywood gets wet it gives of a smell which very rarely goes. The MDF used is not the grade bought in your DIY outlets. It is specially engineered. The MDF allows us to also get a better finish with the Oak veneers.

But to be fair all three are perfectly suitable for the job in hand. For example Mark Wilkinson furniture uses 19mm Particle board, Smallbone use Plywood.

1. The back of the unit is also 19mm Oak veneered.
2. All our drawers our solid 15mm oak boxes with a 9mm base with dovetail joints.
3. The thickness of our doors and drawers is 25mm. Apart from some appliance doors which for technical reasons have to be 20mm."

We haven't had it fitted yet so I can't comment on how good they are overall, but I feel we have had good service so far as we have changed our minds about the design a lot to try and get it perfect. The only thing I don't like so much is it isn't entirely bespoke, so for example, you can't choose any type of handle - we only had a choice of 1 for the design we are going for.