Howdens Kitchens

[showmethegin]

Hi All, we are preparing to renovate our kitchen, once we're in our new house. We are looking for coloured units, green potentially and we've see some we like on the Howdens website. Bit confused as they say they are trade only? We had been planning on FIL installing the kitchen to bring the price down (he has done it many times before and is very capable).

Does this mean purchasing a howdens kitchen is impossible? Does anyone have experience with them?

Needs someone with a trade account like,a builder or fitter so you may struggle.

Try DIY kitchens. Brilliant but you design yourself

You need to arrange a consultation with one of their kitchen designers 🙂

Yeah, they only sell to trades people. But if you know someone with an account you could ask them if you can order off their account, they don’t have to have anything more to do with it than being the middle man, you design/order/pay yourself.

That's really helpful, thanks. I've heard a lot about DIY Kitchens and their website looks great, but feels very daunting! It's our first house so total newbies at this.

What are their prices like? We've seen one we really like from magnet but I think units only will come to around 6.5k which is more than we wanted to spend to be honest.

I'm sat in my Howdens kitchen just now. PP are right you need a trade acct. Word of warning, I'm not massively impressed with my kitchen it's 'worn out' quite quickly. I might just have got unlucky or made a poor choice. I have the grey/green colour shaker one. I still love it to look at, but I know it won't last long.

Also, we were due to have ours delivered on the 10th of the month or something like that. Phoned me on the 29th of the previous month and insisted I took delivery next day and if i wanted to stick to planned date the price would be going up! Very odd way to conduct business. We weren't ready for delivery so it caused issues.

Personally, I wouldn't buy from them again. I expect though that no kitchen company are perfect and if you ask you'll hear good and bad reviews about all companies.

@showmethegin we have gone with DIY kitchens if you can get to one of their showrooms it makes it a lot clearer what the units look like we were very impressed, we got a measure and quote from wickes as we liked one of their designs, it came in at £5000 just for units, sink taps and worktop we took this to DIY kitchens and thiers came in at £3000 like you we have a fitter lined up

Do DIY kitchens have many showrooms? I looked online but could only see one in Yorkshire

sorry didn't realise they only have the one showroom we live near enough to go there but if you look at the video of the showrooms that is very accurate of what it looks like,

I have the grey/green shaker one too. The doors are painted oak- ours is very sturdy.

DH created an account for himself, as he was fitting it.

We've just had a quote from B&Q for our kitchen, £3,681. Built in oven/microwave, sink, tap, glass display units, induction hob/hood and the units are gorg white gloss handleless. Price doesn't include fitting but we can get it fitted for under £1,000 so overall just under 5k.

shockers I have the cheaper version. Mine is certainly not painted oak. I wish!

We were very pleased with the quality from DIY. There were some threads last year with negative stories but appears connected to a problem machine and I have seen more positive stuff since.

A neighbour used them last year after seeing ours and she is very pleased

Have had a howdens kitchen and was going to again until my sister got a DIY Kitchen and the price and quality was amazing. I got a price from howdens and did the same myself on DIY and it was a few £k cheaper!

My howdens kitchen is still looking good 8 years on. Would definitely use them again.

I had plans done by both Magnet and Howdens but ending up taking the best bits of both and ordering from DIY Kitchens for £5k rather than the £14k they both quoted. Ordered my own appliances, organised all the trades and my units are being delivered next week. Hope to get it all done for less than £12k exactly what I want with much higher spec appliances and worktops. Howdens would have been my preference of the 2 but their colours were boring.