Have you ever designed your own kitchen?

[Booksandmags79]

Hi everyone

Hope you may be able to help me. It works out considerably cheaper to try and buy our kitchen online. The only snag is you have to have designed your kitchen yourself and know what you're ordering.

Has anyone done this successfully? Any tips or things to watch out for? I could do with saving as much as I can as the budget is tight.

Thanks in advance for any info anybody has. I have zero experience in this kind of thing and so I'm sure the potential for me to go horribly wrong and cost myself more money is high!

I've done a few. I read up on it a lot, got a couple of library books and pored over websites so hopefully avoided anything unsafe. I think you know best how you use your kitchen and what you want in it.

I worked it out roughly on the IKEA planner to get the basic circulation right, then drew it out on A3 graph paper to scale to be sure everything fitted in and for the fitter to work to. We had two versions that were virtually a mirror image but one worked better with the routes through the room and gave a bit more space for the table.

I really like the "zones" theory, it gives you a kitchen that's easy to work in. here - scroll down to the brochure download. My aims are a good preparation space - 4 or 5 feet, the width of your arm's reach - between sink and hob, and somewhere separate to make tea with everything in reach including fridge, cups, spoons etc. Agree about having crockery/cutlery near the dishwasher = also think about when the dishwasher is open does it block anything?

Ikea kitchens are a different size but almost all others are standard with a 72cm high base door. So you can often mix and match from different suppliers.

Brilliant thank you.

Wiifitmama how did you find your designer? I think we can do it ourselves as we realised last night that we don't need to change the position of much. But it'd be good to have a plan b!

I am in London so when I googled independent kitchen designers, I came up with a good choice. I read their websites and chose two I liked the look of to call (make sure any you choose are NOT tied to or on commission for any kitchen companies). I called both and talked through what I wanted and it became really clear that one of them was not for me. So I booked the otherguy to come out. I am really happy I did it and although his brief was to design it around using Ikea units, it was him who recommended DIY kitchens as a better alternative with more choice of units for the space I had.

weve just redone ours. Took a few months to design using online planning tool. We started by making a list of must haves and then moved them around on the planning tool. Think we used Wickes. We bought from an independent in the end and they were really helpful. We ended up moving a door to house additional ovens but it wasn't difficult. Look at lots of ideas, think about what you would like and take your time.

Thank you both.

I'm going to get Oneplan on Houzz to do my design when I get my new house. Great feedback and not too pricey. Also a mumsnetter.

I'll look into that thank you.

Oneplan helped me with ours. She was really lovely and though I had to change a couple of things because of builder issues, she gave me a couple of invaluable suggestions. I'd never have known about her if it wasn't for Mumsnet!

Yes I've seen OnePlan highly recommend on here and Houzz a few times now.

They look really interesting I think I may give them a whirl. I like the idea of impartial fresh eyes on the project.