Kitchen value adds

[LoopyLu2019]

I'm looking to upgrade the kitchen in our house without doing a complete redo. It's currently as basic as it comes with horrible gloss grey cabinet doors against budget cabinet frames - it looks cheap and try-hard.

I plan to fit new doors in shaker style in a more timeless matt colour and new handles and new tiles

I'm also considering new worktops but torn between oak (match the hardwood floor were putting throughout the downstairs), wood effect laminate and quartz. What would people recommend as a good value worktop that buyers would be interested in? We'll be selling in 1-2 years so don't want to put in something that will look cheap/bad when that time comes, we'd rather spend a bit more to give the house more assets when we come to sell.

Is real wood a turn off to buyers? Does quartz add value? Can anyone recommend good wood effect laminate worktops?

Also things like new sinks and taps, is it a waste of time spending £500 on a prettier tap and sink?

Personally if I wanted to appeal to a buyer I’d go quartz if you can get a decent price. Will make the kitchen look more expensive. Could be a sales point as long as the colour is current/attractive. If I was going to that trouble/expense I’d do sink and tap as well. No point in doing half a job.

Solid wood worktops look good but scream continual work to me.

Laminate is fine and will freshen up the kitchen but won’t be a wow.

I would also go quartz!

Quartz for me. I had wooden work tops and they were a nuisance, stained easily, warped slightly. Pain in the proverbial, never again.

It depends on your market, but I think you're unlikely to make your money back on expensive worktops. People might want to change the kitchen anyway. The quartz will certainly have the widest appeal but whether it'll actually add more than the £2-3k+ that it cost you is more debatable. To me, it's too much to spend on a gamble that it'll add value to the house.

Meant to add, take that quartz & new sink budget and spend it on your new home. Then for roughly the same spend, you get to keep exactly what you want for years and years.

Thanks, we're changing downstairs floors as we're soon to get a dog and some idiot builder decided to put grey carpet down by all the exterior doors before we bought and they're stained thanks to the dust and muck from being surrounded by building site and fields. And the current worktop would look very cheap, un coordinated with that after I've tackled cabinets. I'm leaning more towards fake wood laminate for warmth and function if quartz won't be worth the £££ and wood will put people off. When we sell we'll want to sell quickly and it's a starter family home so we've been advised to upgrade the house a bit to feel polished and ready to live in. It was "budget" spec in terms of developer standards no built in storage etc. Luckily were diy competent so most changes are material costs only.

something weve done as were titivating before putting house on the market: the gas hob knobs are worn in looks. amazon 4 pack nice shiny new ones for £2.50!
lino on floor over crappy old tiles, repaint walls, new cheap blind in the window.

done! and a good clean.

Thanks, we made sure when we painted to get a few extra lt of each colour to put a fresh coat on when it goes to market. At the moment we're willing to spend money making it feel like a home for us, but trying to make choices that will also add value/appeal at point of sale, avoiding trends that might be too niche or dated quickly. Luckily my taste is fairly neutral, only gone bold in a few rooms!

If it’s a starter home no one will be expecting quartz and laminate will do the job. Some of the ideas from others are good and won’t cost as much but will make it attractive. Just put B & Q laminate in a flat. Can’t recommend it over any other. Probably just a matter of taste and cost.

Personally I would go for laminate. Quartz, while lovely, is expensive and will eat into any potential profit it may add. Real
Wood is okay but is hard work to keep looking nice. My parents had oak worktops and despite regular oiling and always drying around the sink, it still ends up with marks and black spots from the damp which need to be sanded and even then, they never go completely.
I would go laminate or wood veneer worktops. Ikea do these where they are cheap wood on the inside but have a layer of real wood around the outside so look good. It a lot cheaper the solid hard wood and come with a 25 year guarantee. However, I'm not sure if they are any easier to look after than real solid wood...

I'd advise what I always do when customers ask me this question:

if you're planning on selling the property then don't spend time/money that you don't need to.

Quartz looks great, but as someone earlier mentioned, it costs at least 2-3k .. would it add 2-3k to the selling price? .. if not, then it's not worth it.

Solid Wood is polarising; it looks good and is relatively inexpensive, but having to maintain the worktop every 6 months is a huge negative for some customers.

I'd say that wood-effect laminate is your best bet; it's cheap, looks good, will serve you well while you live there and won't put anyone off when it comes time to sell.

For the doors; shaker can be seen as old-fashioned, while gloss can be seen as being too modern. Both are on the higher end of the price scale too.

A good compromise is a flat slab matt door in a neutral colour; it has the widest appeal and is typically the cheapest option from most manufacturers.

In the end, it depends on how long you're planning on living there and how much value you're willing to invest into having a kitchen that you like while you do.

Be under no illusions, if you pay for expensive furniture/worktops, then it's unlikely to add much (if any) value to your home.

If you go with the wood laminate, it might be worth a trip to a specialist worktop place as they'll have the widest range. You may as well pick a good wood laminate. I think Duropal(?) might be a good one, but the "realisticness" varies wildly and is probably in the eye of the beholder.

Also if you can, skip tiles and just have a small upstand. Then people can see it's easy to change the worktop and make good. But again, if it means adding to your expenses by getting a plasterer in where you wouldn't otherwise, then don't.

@MTJTD thank you for writing a detailed reply and @HoHoHolly for yours too.

Yea I have A LOT of samples of wood and laminate on their way and I'll be dragging DP to the local suppliers this weekend.

're shaker style I was thinking of going for the more modern thinner shaker, the kitchen needs a bit of texture. You make me feel a bit bad about ditching the sovereign gloss cabinets If they're secretly pricey (though it sounds a little like a 're sell opportunity) they're hideous and were installed to basic white frames so look so disjointed compared to the ones is a nicely finished kitchen (probably could have tolerated them if it was good match)

Yeah our target budget for the whole house is about 5k for all materials (we'll be doing all the labor) and I'm aiming to be able to do just enough to make it something I'm proud of and not cookie cutter. If you walk up and down our road you'd notice everyone has the same kitchen and they're all the front window!!

If it were your own kitchen I would say quartz, but as you are planning to sell I would do the laminate. The chances that your buyer’s taste are exactly the same as yours are slim. As a buyer it might actually put me off a house if the price reflected a newly upgraded kitchen in a style/colour scheme that I didn’t love as it would mean we would feel so wasteful changing it.