£10,000 Wickes Kitchen (Is this a good or bad deal?)

[cadencer1]

Have been saving for so long as we really want a new kitchen.

Received a quotation from Wickes on the kitchen. Our kitchen is relatively big and needs many wall and base units. There will be a centre island with a granite worktop too. The Wickes currently has 50% and an extra 10% summer sale discount. It took the final price after disccount to £14000 (£8000 for the kitchen units, sinks, taps and bits and bobs, £6000 for the granite worktop). I then discussed with the branch manager as it was way over our budget. Then the manager agreed to take £4000 off which made the final total price (exc. installation cost) to exactly £10,000.

I didn't accept the offer as it is still £1,000 above our budget. Personally, I have no idea whether £10,000 is a good deal or not as i) this is our first kitchen (no prior experience at all) ii) we don't have quotations from elswhere to compare.

My questions are:
i) Is it likely I can get another £1000 discount from Wickes so I can get the price down to my budget? I am not confident in achieving it as the manager told me he had already done everything to help me.
ii) Is it likely to get the kitchen cheaper elsewhere?

Any suggestion or advice will be highly appreciated. Many thanks.

Hi there, this thread is a little old now and the links may be out of date - if, like OP, you're thinking about a new kitchen from Wickes, you can take a look at their site here. MNHQ.

Try IKEA. Which? rated them the best kitchen manufacturer a few weeks ago.

We bought our kitchen from Wickes three years ago-it still looks new. They were really professional in terms of supplying all the right parts on time. Good customer service too.

Whatever you do, avoid wren like the plague.

Just a word on granite... It looks fab when it is 100% clean but keeping it clean is an absolute blooming nightmare. If you wipe it down with the cloth after washing up the washing up liquid (even diluted) leaves streaks. If you wipe granite down using granite friendly sprays you still need to polish it dry for it to look good.

You may already know this and have decided it's worth the massive faff but I have to say I would never choose granite based on past experience.

I just realised I didn't answer your questions...

1. That sounds like a good discount already.
2. IKEA do cheaper kitchens with good reviews. It depends on what you want. We spent £1k more than we had planned but it was absolutely worth it.

Do you want a 30K kitchen for 10K or do you want to find an 8K kitchen?
Your offer sounds very good.

Thanks.

We thought of Ikea. But a builder told me that the IKEA unit has little space at the back of the base unit. Its plinth is also smaller than others which may be of a problem to run pipes. To solve the pipe problem, he suggests to bring the base units forward a bit in order to leave enough space at the back to run pipes. We don't like the fact that the base units will be hung on a beam installed on the wall instead of directly on the wall (we will lose sonme kitchen space because of that).

I think your builder has misunderstood
IKEA kitchens...I have one, and the base units are deeper front to back as they don't have a false back on them like others, which allows for easy fitting round pipes, but wastes a lot of space. IKEA kitchen base units are the full depth from the front of the cabinet to the wall of the kitchen, your joiner just needs to make a few cuts around the pipes where necessary.
A lot of builders don't like IKEA kitchens because there's a tiny bit more work involved-any joiner worth their salt (like the one I had) takes it in their strid. Don't let your builder be lazy about it-it's YOUR kitchen.
Mine has been in almost 9 years now and still looks new

It sounds like a good deal. We had a Wickes kitchen 9 years ago. It was £8000 with a beach worktop. Looked like new when we sold the house this year.

Or even a 'beech' worktop!

We're currently considering going with Wickes for our new kitchen and were told there would be further discounts being offered next weekend. Maybe pop back then and see what they offer?

Sorry. I forgot to mention that the intial 50% + 10% off was on the kitchen units only. I think Wickes used to do discounts which applied to everything. But their current offer only applies to certain items. The granite worktop, taps, sinks, and other small fittings didn't have any discount at all in the £14,000 quotation. It was not a £30,000 kitchen. The list price was just over £19,000 which of course didn't have any meaning at all.
Many thanks.

We have a wickes kitchen it is 17 yo and has lasted well. Have you had granite counters before? They look good and are great for pastry but are had to keep shiny. Also they are easy to break things on, I broke so much stuff our first month here, was used to butcher block. After wiping out the bodum glass casserole, I put the teapot away in the cupboard.
Ikea do really good, really cheap butcher block counters. Had an Ikea kitchen about 25 years ago it was a good build standard but not as good as wickes, go and have at look at ikea.

Given that Wickes do 50% sales several times a year, how many 'full' price kitchens do they sell?
Also happy to drop another 33% of the price.
I do not know about quality compared to Ikea, but don;t kid yourself you have had any discount.