Kitchens

[MsRigsby]

The kitchen in my house is tiny, about 2m x 2.10m. I've had a couple of quotes in and they are in the £10K range - without appliances. This seems absolutely ridiculous to me - or am I being unrealistic?

Has anyone used the IKEA kitchen planning/fitting service? Is it any good?

Sorry, should have said this is for a complete refit.

Have a look at the DIY kitchens website. Clear prices, good quality well priced kitchens. The catch is you have to plan it yourself and take your own measurements, but the website planner is exceptionally easy to use, it adds the price up as you go along. Just make sure the price you look at is the Product List tab as it automatically works out all the little extras like side panels and pelmets.

If you can get there the show room is very good, it's a few miles north of Doncaster.

I am having an ikea kitchen... i cannot describe to you how much research and planning I've done in the last year. I thought the ikea planning appointment would be a wste of time but it was actually very helpful.

All the research I've done suggests ikea kitchens are great (and remmeber that unless very very expensive most kitchens are just cabinets made of MDF and many use the same blum and blum hinges).

I'd definitely make an appointment if I were you.

My IKEA kitchen is just being taken out and replaced but since it is only 8 years old we are reusing all of the units in the utility room, pantry and boot room. I’ve had no issues with it at all. I would recommend you look at a style with wooden doors to make it easier to paint in the future. £10k sounds high for the space

Get a design from a "known" kitchen shop and then send to DIY kitchens. DIY are good quality and a great price. We are saving thousands using them and they couldn't get more helpful. Win/win

Agree on DIY kitchens. They are fab. But you need a design first- either do your own or have a kitchen shop do it.

I recommend IKEA and DIY kitchens for clients on a budget
Good quality and value
I put in a IKEA utility room in the next room to a £75k hand built kitchen for a client and they were impressed with both as the quality was great and it didn't look out of place.
Main thing is find a good fitter and spend some time thinking about what you want and the layout.
You can also 'upgrade' by buying handles from elsewhere to make it look more bespoke as I think Ikea handles are very recognisable.

We waited for the sale at Wickes and got 50% off cabinets which brought it down to about £5k including fitting and appliances.

We had an ikea kitchen put in earlier this year. We had them come out and measure the space and then plan it with us. Really great service, not pushy like some of the other places we went to. I would recommend getting you appliances elsewhere though. It took 3 deliveries, 2 days to build the cabinets and then 3 days to fit the kitchen (we used our own fitters). One thing to be aware of with ikea is the lack of service void so we had to sink our pipework into the wall. Highly recommend their corner cupboard solutions, pan drawers, hidden drawers and the pull outs like the bin solutions for under the sink.

I had IKEA kitchen but this time I found a better quality kitchen from www.tkckitchens.co.uk they actually came out the same sort of money but I got my own kitchen fitter to fit it.

also got the void for plumbling

IKEA kitchens are great but they don't do a huge range of sizes and in a small space this can be more tricky. Worth having a play because it may still work for you.

DIY do a really good range of widths and some narrow depth options. I have a small u shape and theirs made the most of my corners. I could only fit one drawer unit but got one with about six shallow drawers which is ideal for me

Wren did me a design with four 20cm cupboards! Absolute waste of space.

Oh and the other brilliant thing from DIY is the top unit for microwave. It has a cupboard above so good storage but gets it off the counter - essential in a small space

We had a great online design appointment with IKEA. Would have gone with them but couldn’t find a fitter to do it and I’d heard less than great things about the local ikea fitters.
We are about to order from a local ‘outlet’ kitchen supply and fit company.
The issue I find is the fitters. We had recommendations for one joiner but he would only fit Howdens … who I found unpleasant to deal with (failed to show up for an appointment) and also overpriced.
We have done a lot of our renovation DIY but kitchen is complex so wanted a company who would both supply and fit.
I recommend doing some local research for the best deals.

I wanted to fit out a slightly bigger than average btl kitchen on a budget. I went to Wickes as I get 10 percent discount there. I got the kitchen planner to plan out the kitchen. I obviously took detailed measurements including doors and windows. I was going to get a kitchen costing £7600 in sale but decided to look on eBay and noticed as lovely expensive looking kitchen for sale 80 miles away. I messaged seller and asked for list of units and it included Integrated fridge freezer, dishwasher, oven and hob. Luckily the units would fit a few units over too. I got DH to hire a large van and DS went with him to collect. They had to dismantle which took most of day but labelled everything and I got a carpenter to fit it into btl. It looks great and even with van hire and kitchen fitting cost only cost £3170 including new wooden worktops and kick boards. The money I saved paid for wall tiles, floor tiles, kitchen blind and was a far better quality kitchen than I was going to buy. It looks fab.

Do not accept the first price! Having a new kitchen fitted at the moment, had quotes from Howdens, magnet, DIY kitchens and Wicked. With the exception of DIY kitchens who we used to negotiate, every company dropped their initial price, Howdens knocked £4K off, Magnet we changed designs a few times but eventually got about £3.5k off and Wickes dropped their price about 3 times during the initial design appointment.
The whole process annoyed the hell out of me.

Good thread about this here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/property/4470850-IKEA-kitchen-lessons-learnt

@RooLou85

Ooh, how did you get them to drop their price?

Depends what you are looking for.
But the price seems extraordinary to me especially for the size.

We have a similar sized kitchen as you, I found on Facebook market place one that would fit, looks looking great, modern county style-cream cabinets, wooden worktop including oven, extractor etc, for £230 plus delivery van £50 - absolute bargain.
Yes, we will need to remove our old one and retile the backsplash but still.

@BoPeeple We went to Howdens first and they quoted £14k or if we agreed that week we could get the sale price £12.5k!! Then Magnet who gave us a figure which I can’t quite remember and then I told them Howdens were cheaper and they dropped to £11k.
Wickes next who were the cheapest but came flat packed where as Howdens and Magnet were factory fitted, so fitting costs would have been more. Also have a trade account for Wickes so managed to get them down to £8kish on the first visit.
Looked at DIY Kitchens and used their room planner to draw up a quote from them also about £8k, back in contact with Howdens and told them I’d had two quotes around the £8k mark and sent them the DIY kitchens one as this had the best cupboard and worktop spec and they agreed to match it!! Job done? Nope because Magnet brought out a new colour for their Hoxton range and I fell for it, so back to magnet for a revised quote for the more expensive range £13k, took my hubby there one day when he finished work early, he works in construction and this particular day he looked like it too, and the manager took one look at him and set us up with a trade account which knocked the price down to £11k.
Are you still with me?
This has all taken place over about 8 weeks and in the meantime I have bought a fridge freezer, oven, hob, extractor, sink, tap and door handles so I knock all of them off my quote and decide to source the worktop separately as I didn’t like the magnet ones. Fast forward another two months and I went in last week to finalise the order and upgrade some cupboards, final kitchen cost £9k, looking at about £1600 for worktop but that’s because I’ve gone for quartz instead of laminate.

Kitchen gets delivered tomorrow 😬😬

Recently got our kitchen from Wren, I do feel like their reputation is wholly dependent on who you meet on the shop floor, and which fitter you are assigned. We had brilliant service and an amazing fitter. Can't fault them at all.