So, if not DIY Kitchens then who?

[taybert]

Having read about all the problems DIY are having at the moment I’m considering alternatives. I’ve been really put off Howden’s due to their pricing practices- is it that bad? Who else is good? We just want decent quality units, nothing very fancy and no particularly fancy design. We don’t want built in appliances etc. The main issue putting me off DIY is the very long lead times and delays at the moment. From what the website is showing we’d have to order now but we don’t have exact measurements yet because of the building we’re doing. I want to try to minimise the time we’re without a kitchen.

Howden's pricing practices? What are they then?

Is there a local kitchen retailer you could look at? My very recent experience is that our local kitchen business is quoting a great price, much less than we thought.

Well they don’t deal directly with the public so you have to get a quote via a tradesperson who has an account- I’d heard the pricing is quite opaque with differing discounts depending on who you go through and there being an option for the tradesperson to take commission. There are examples online of people getting quotes differing by several thousand for exactly the same thing. I just prefer to know what I’m paying for and it to be transparent so I can compare properly. To be fair it’s a while since I read about that happening so it might be different now.

We got ours from a builders merchant who sell to the public and trade although they price like Howdens as that's how builders merchants work. It's a crown kitchen.

B&Q or Wickes maybe.

My Ikea kitchen is still going strong after 10 years

We have gone to Wickes following losing faith in DIYK. They have a mega sale on at the moment which has meant our cabinets have turned out cheaper than the planned order with DIYK. I will get our builder to fit them though. Benchmarx might be worth a look too?

We recently had a DIY Kitchen installed and I wouldn't recommend them based on the quality either. We've been quite disappointed with both the finish and the after sales service. It was for a new kitchen in an extension (so sounds a similar situation). Lead time wasn't too bad but we still had our old kitchen functioning at the time so wasn't much of an issue anyway.

The extension also included a utility room and we bought the cabinets for that from Homebase. In contrast, I've been really pleased with them so far.

Thanks all. We’re quite rural and our nearest kitchen places are handmade solid wood type places which I’m sure are lovely but unlikely to be in our price range. There is a Benchmarx not too far away.

I’m dithering about the DIY situation. It just seemed perfect for us. Maybe by the time we need the kitchen (late August/early September) things will be sorted out? It feels like a gamble though!

“We have gone to Wickes following losing faith in DIYK ... Benchmarx might be worth a look too?”

Benchmarx are the kitchen arm of Travis Perkins and supply Wickes, so a Wickes kitchen is a Benchmarx kitchen. Benchmarx are trade only like Howdens so the fitter needs an account with them, and same as Howdens they won’t quote prices to the public.

Similarly Magnet supply Homebase.

There are only so many large scale kitchen manufacturers.

I like the look of solid plywood kitchens like Koivu but haven’t had direct experience and I imagine they’re more expensive.

We’ve gone with kitchen stori through a local shop. It hasn’t been installed yet but the experience so far has been great.

We drove up to diy kitchen showroom ( from the West Midlands!) expecting to order a kitchen and it put me off. The quality of the unit they have on display was shit, as were their installation - tiling shit, edges not straight, units not level & chipped paintwork. There was nice cake though.

We made the decision before all the bad reviews came out. It must be awful for people who’ve ordered their kitchen from them.

Wickes seem to have a sale on at the moment (do they always have a sale on?) and also look to do a good finance solution. I’ll speak to our fitter about Benchmarx and Howden’s too and look at getting quotes. I really liked the idea of just choosing the units we wanted and knowing the cost but I think we probably need to go down the route of designers and quotes.

Just find a builder with a good discount! Some builders don't pass on their howdens discount to their customers though.