New kitchen advice please - Wren, Ikea, magnet, something else?

[noodleaddict]

Looking to redo our medium sized kitchen. Like the wren stuff and they've quoted around £10k (though that includes £3k for the quartz worktop ) but have just been put off by some of the terrible reviews on here!

To be honest we were looking at more like a budget of £7k but we want good quality too. Is this unrealistic?

Any advice on who to go with, best designers/fitters? Is it best to source your own fitters or use the kitchen company's? Source worktop separately perhaps? What about appliances?

Any advice would be gratefully received!

TIA

Hopeful bump

I don't really have a suggestion who is good but my parents have just had a Wickes kitchen fitted and the service and fitting has been atrocious. So I'd personally avoid them.

We got our kitchen designed and priced up by wren and even went as far as paying the deposit, but it felt expensive for what it was and their fitters didn't have any availability for months so i asked about supply only. Excluding appliances (got them from ao.com) and without fitting it was about 7.5k, but I put the list of items into DIY Kitchens and it came out at about 5k, so that's where we got it from! You can also send them your design and they'll fill up a shopping basket for you so you can compare the cost, and pricing is so much more transparent.

Fitting wise I trawled Google and Facebook for local recommendations and found a really good builder in the end. I'd definitely recommend sending out a few emails to get quotes, not least because with people like Wren you pay up front so why would they care about keeping you happy during the fit? Our guy refused to let us pay the balance until we were happy with everything he and his other tradesfolk had done.

Alpacas same here. We had Wickes do our kitchen last year and it was appalling. Builders were lazy and I've had to repair loads of cupboard doors myself. I couldn't stress how much I would avoid Wickes.

Benchmarx.

They are a trade only company. However they have small show rooms and will deal with the public.
They will design, supply and deliver everything.
You will need to arrange the fitter though.

They make the kitchen for Wickes so we went to our local Wickes for a look at the show kitchen. They are less than half the price of Wickes.

Buy your appliances elsewhere.
Also we got our sink and intigrated bin online.

Consider Howdens. I was really, really reluctant but DH's friend works there and managed to get us such a hefty discount it actually came out at an amount (for the physical kitchen) we could afford to lose if I just wasn't impressed. If you ring around fitters and ask what discount they get with Howdens you should get a decent fitter used to working with their stuff.

I am SO pleased I took the risk. My kitchen is 18 months old now and I still sigh happily when I walk into it, I love it enough to bother tidying it constantly, and every single person who walks into our house comments on it.

Worth looking at.

Thanks everyone, seems to be pointing towards sourcing the units ourselves and getting a fitter separately

My mum's just got a Howdens kitchen and she's quite happy with it

I've got a plain white Benchmark kitchen. I'm very pleased with it, we sourced appliances separately. We have got one of their sinks, but wish we sourced that ourselves as well. It's quite flimsy feeling, looks good though!

DIY kitchens get great reviews and there are many MNers happy with theirs. This is where I hope to buy from when I get a new kitchen.

Currently 10% off in the sale too.

Another one for howdens. Good quality and we found our own fitter.

Initially went with wren but we pulled out.

DIY kitchens look good but a bit worried about ordering without viewing first. Can you see them anywhere other than West Yorkshire?

We have Howdens. Got it in their sale

But would also recommend Ikea - friend who's an architect just put in a fantastic ikea kitchen.

We will go with DIY kitchens or Ikea when we are at that stage of our extension

Just ordered an Ikea kitchen...it's arriving this week (eeek) so spent today ( its bloody sunny outside!!) emptying my old kitchen with a view to start taking it out tomorrow

My parter is a carpenter so he's going to fit it

He's got an Ikea kitchen about 15 years old, he's v pleased with it. He also got Howdens kitchens and they are good too.

Ps I looked at Wren too, the guy designed the new layout, as I couldn't think outside the box, but they were expensive to buy from.

Good luck!!

Mine is DIY kitchens. It's very good quality and the service was excellent.

Hacker and Schuller are mid priced German ranges. Google will tell you if there are any dealers near you.

Lovely. So looks like howdens, diy kitchens, benchmarx and Ikea are all good options. Will continue to investigate...

Bit non-standard, but I got mine from b and q, flatpack and built and fitted it myself. Mine is only a galley kitchen and I think another time I'd get someone in to rewire so I could have plugs where I wanted them, and maybe someone to fit the work top (cutting the sink top was a mare!) but I got a galley kitchen with fully sealed doors (so they don't warp) and a solid wood worktop for about £500. Depending on the state/set up, you might also be able to get away with fitting new doors to existing cabinets and a new work top on top! I fitted it myself but it was hard work and stressful so you could always build cabinets and get someone in to hang them, move any plumbing etc.

Don't think we're brave enough to fit ourselves! There's a bit of reconfiguring to do too. Wish I was as sounds super cost effective!

Another vote for DIY Kitchens. Our fitter was really impressed. We bought units for £3k ish they would've been a good £5k more for the Magnet equivalent. It's standing up to heave use very well.

We also got a Maia worktop as we couldn't afford stone and it's fantastic. No visible joins, easy to clean. Lovely.

Yet another vote for DIY kitchens. Loved the fact you could have any F&B colour you wanted. This is our kitchen, maybe not to your taste but just as an example - cost a lot, lot less than anything else we looked at including Ikea, and the quality is superb.

I got my last kitchen from Ikea and loved it. Great value, lovely range and it was all good quality. Some fitters don't like it though as the backs of the cupboards are non-standard and it can be awkward fitting plumbing etc behind. That was about 8 years ago, smallish kitchen with built in cooker and hood but no other appliances. In total it cost about £3500 fitted including tiling (the Ikea bit was about 2k, joiner charged 1600ish which included cost of tiles).

Last year (in new house) I had another kitchen fitted and went with Howdens this time. Medium to large room, the Howdens bill was about £3500-4000 but included no appliances this time, bought those separately. This included a few fancy cupboards (pull out pantry types and a carousel corner). Fitting cost about the same again BUT that was because we needed a lot of walls/floor redoing and replastering so with a room in better condition it would've been a lot less.

I love, love, love my Howdens kitchen. It's really fantastic quality and was worth the extra money - even though I liked my old one too, the difference is noticeable.

The downside is you can't get a quote directly, they only do trade sales so you need a joiner to contact them first, then they come to you and measure up then quote. They'll recommend a joiner of you don't have one in mind. IME the quotes are very flexible and can come down so don't accept their first price.

whatashower is that Luca in a bespoke colour? It looks lovely and I'm just wondering which range it is as we are about to finalise ours