Built in wardrobes

[Woodpecker22]

We have had an extension built with a dressing area which has space for 3 built in wardrobes. We built walls at the side of each with the plan to get sliding doors and innards.

We have had one furniture company come out to quote and 2 carpenters and I was shocked that their quotes are all over £10k! Does anyone have any recommendations of what we could do a bit more cheaply? We asked someone about fitting the ikea pax and they still wanted £7k plus materials so I am out of ideas. We are in the South East.

You need recommendations of local joiners who don’t advertise, have a waiting list in years and whose names are passed around like gold dust.

I was shocked at the quotes we got.

Alternatively there are videos on YouTube to show how to do it yourself.

Keep trying on quotes.

Have you haggled/ looked at other companies? We have used Hammonds a few times and they are expensive but not as eye watering as that. Getting 3 double wardrobes fitted here for about 3500 soon

IKEA Pax and build them yourselves. Or buy some cheap second hand ones.

Fitted wardrobes are notoriously very expensive. We paid four grand for one wall of them last year.

You will be able to get a carpeneter to do it cheaper, the issue here will be spec, so if you ask someone to put some cheap MDf shelving in etc and leave it with no door the cost will drop dramatically. The moment you start to move into made to measure and bespoke you’re into serious money,

Yes, look at customising Ikea wardrobes yourself or get a bank of freestanding wardrobes together.

£7k for Ikea pax? They're taking the piss. We put three together in an evening and we are not handy at all!

Spend an hour or so playing around on the planner, it spits out your shopping list and you're on your way! The carcases are dead easy to put together and everything else just screws in.

The pax wardrobes are easy to put together, it just takes 2 people to lift them up and hold bits in places!

Thanks all. I think we might have to go down the diy route. Our quotes were local recommendations with long waiting lists, it seems to be a nightmare getting any tradespeople around here.

Have you tried the checkatrade website to find builders? I've found more reliable and cheaper builders here than neighbour recommendations:

www.checkatrade.com/

We got ours from the pax range, you can have an appointment to design which we did remotely as I was clueless and then they have a service they recommend called task rabbit which was charging £250 to put together and that's 4 wardrobes, we are very happy with it all.

They also do the shopping list for you in the design which gives a barcode that automatically adds it to your basket