New kitchen - Alternatives to DIY kitchens or Ikea?

[Missnearlyvintage]

Hi everyone,

After getting advice on here, we are planning our new kitchen - it's not huge (L shaped, 2.45m and 2.65m), and our budget is about £5k all in.

We excitedly visited the DIY kitchens showroom yesterday, and I've been using their kitchen planner (for hours and hours), but have come to the conclusion that they just don't make base units in the the right widths for us to fit everything into our kitchen.

DH has refused to even look at Ikea kitchens because of the mixed reviews about quality and lack of utility space at the back of the units.

Could anyone suggest any other brands we could look at please?

I've been into two local independent showrooms recently but neither stocked anything within our price range.

I know 5K is a pretty small budget!

Thank you!

Wickes ,Howdens ? Our builder says he always uses Howdens and they are very good . We are having them come to do a plan on Tuesday 🤗
We went to see Wren but decided against them due to reviews 😬

We used Howdens, very happy with it

A friend went with Howdens - she is very pleased with them. They had an extension and the builder fitted them as part of the total job.

DIY are very accommodating with making bespoke widths for very little extra, I'm currently planning my kitchen with them and am having several bespoke width units for only about £30 extra per one

Also they have such a wide range of widths as standard, I'd be surprised if you could find more choice on the high street. I've heard good things about units online too, who seem to have a similar kind of offering to DIY and also do bespoke sizes.

Good luck!

You need to take another look at diy kitchens due to the custom sizes and ikea who's sizes are a pain but they are good quality and cheap. How dens is only as good as the discount you may receive and I hate the lack of transparency.

The service void is easy to sort, but fitters and builders moan, as only like to do things the same way each time.

Had a rental with a Howden's kitchen and it was good, I'd happily have another one.

Have you thought about buying fitted units for the sink and possibly cooker then getting unfittted furniture for the rest of the kitchen. You can get this second hand and good quality easily enough. We've had IKEA Varde (I think) but other companies make it and it was very solid and adaptable. We just bought pieces as we had the money.

Unit widths rely on suitable doors being available. Can you post a sketch floorplan of your kitchen, showing where doors and windows are and a list of what you need to include and let us have a go for you?

Well I had absolutely no idea that DIY kitchens will make bespoke units! Thank you for letting me know!

I'll try to design my ideal layout and see if they could supply the units we would need.

I was a little put off in the DIY kitchens showroom by quality of the paint finish on some of the doors, (paint chipping off etc.), but the units seemed lovely and sturdy and definitely a step up from our current 1980s kitchen.

I'll look into Howdens again as well. We got a quote from them a couple of years ago when we were first considering a new kitchen (and had a bit more money to spend before our boiler started dying...), and thought it was super expensive so we discounted them. I have since read about haggling with them etc. so I'll have to try again and see what their best quote would be.

Thanks very much!

wowfudge - I'll do a sketch and upload it later on, thanks!

Does diy kitchens have a planner where you can put in the dimensions of your room? I could see one where I could choose door colours and worktops, but not for your actual space. Thanks

Yes they do have a planner on their website. I've never used it myself. We got our painted shaker style kitchen from them and we're really pleased with it.

Ikea also don't do the range of unit widths that they used to. Our kitchen has a lot of 50cm wide cupboards/drawers and they don't do that width anymore. So likely that you might have the same issue there even if you would consider Ikea. I'd normally say that lack of utitility space at the back of the units is not an issue for any halfway competent person.

We’ve just used units online who have been very good

Apologies for not uploading a sketch tonight, DD wasn’t keen on going to sleep...

I excitedly enquired with DIY kitchens this afternoon about bespoke width units, and they promptly replied saying that they do not make any bespoke width units so I’m a bit confused now!

Before visiting the DIY kitchens showroom we had chosen a 900cm corner base unit with an L shape bi-fold door which worked well on paper, but in the showroom quite a lot of those doors were misaligned, (very few of the other types of door were), or they had scratched/knocked the doors beside them when being opened/closed. (The painted Linwood display downstairs had a scratch back to bare wood in the cupboard next to the bifold corner unit, which looked like it was the result of the screw at the back of the bifold unit door handle rubbing on the next cupboard door along as it was used). I know the misalignment could probably be fixed on most of them with the hinges every now and again, but the scratching/ knocking concerned me as we aren’t the most careful people in the world at the best of times. We tried all the other corner arrangements we could on the planner and couldn’t find anything that worked as well design wise unfortunately.

I’ll have at units online, thanks very much!

we got our kitchen from Wren and were really impressed with it. Quite a large kitchen and the actual units, worktop etc came to around 4k, it was the appliances fitting and electrical issues we had that topped it to over 10k. We only lived with it for a year before moving unfortunelty so can't vouch for the longevity of it, but we've said when we do the kitchen in our new house (once we've finished paying for the old one🙈!) we'd go to Wren again

DIY certainly do bespoke width units!

I just ordered a load of units and had an email from one of their salespeople saying ‘surely a 500 width cabinet would work better than a 600 there’. I replied saying yes but you don’t do that type of cabinet in 500 - answer ‘yes we can do that for a £24 extra charge’.

Yes please!

I get the impression they wouldn’t do a whole kitchen in bespoke sizes and perhaps it needs to be “round numbers” eg they won’t do a unit that is 536mm wide. But definitely worth enquiring further if it’s just the odd cabinet you need tweaking. I found their range of sizes better than most other off the peg companies.

Benchmarx also worth a look.

Ikea only does sizes in multiples of 300mm as I recall.

I've used both Howdens and rixonway , they are both good middle of the road company's , rixonway is online but good customer support , both have ready built carcasses which saves money if you are paying someone else to fit them , I had the kitchen designer come out each time to measure , offer advice , etc from both , to be honest it's the finish that adds the ' expensive look ' ie nice taps , tiles/ splash backs , handles , sockets and switches , lighting etc

I’ve been looking at a place online called TradeSaveKitchens. (Looking at their tambour units) I’ve not ordered from them yet though.

Thanks for all the information, I've been filtering through it as and when I get five minutes! I still haven't got around to doing a sketch, but I imagine you all have better and far nicer things to do with your evenings than work out my new kitchen layout!

I rung around some more local showrooms today, and surprisingly one has come in well within budget on a supply only basis, (their minimum fitting charge would be too expensive for our small kitchen said the salesperson - so it would be more cost effective for us to contact the shop's fitter privately and arrange a day rate fitting). The kitchen quality seemed good, and I wouldn't have thought it would be in budget from walking around the showroom, so we'll see how that pans out when I add in the costs of tiles, appliances, fitting etc.

DIY kitchens have definitely said that they don't make any bespoke sizes to me, so I'm giving up with them for the time being, or will work out a way of padding out the back of the corner unit door so I don't bash the nearby doors with it if needs be. I could possibly just learn to be a careful person??

I am going to play about a bit more on the DIY kitchens planner though as I find it quite straight forward to use, and then go into howdens and any other kitchen shops I find I think with a rough layout and see if they can quoted based on it.

I've had a look at units online, and like a couple of the door fronts which are quite different in style to most of the DIYK ones. We can't visit as they're too far away, but may try to find any branded kitchen showroom examples locally to check we like the style - that pending, when I get a really good proper kitchen plan I might submit it to units online and see if they can improve/quote based on it.

DH has given up with the new kitchen research process already, and told me yesterday that he would happily select a Howdens kitchen at random by flicking through the catalogue, and order it in whatever layout the designer first suggested just to make it all stop...

Magnet Trade were really good for us. We were doing a renovation so we were allowed to open a trade account but most builders would have one if you were paying them to install.