How much to do a kitchen and a bathroom?

[lettie9]

I received some great advice on my other thread about a new kitchen, but now need some help with costing please 💰

London zone 3 FYI.

Mid-range kitchen from say Wren, 12 units, with stone top and solid wood units. Range cooker, dishwasher, fridge. How much for all this plus installation?

Mid-range bathroom. Bath and shower, sink, toilet - fairly standard set from say Victoria Plum. How much for suite and installation?

We last had work like this done over five years ago, so can't really remember, plus prices have gone up I'm sure.

Thank you!

My husband is questioning the utility of an eye level oven. He says it's not particularly onerous bending down, and I'm inclined to agree, come to think of it. Or is it one of those things once you've stopped bending, you realise how awful bending used to be?

[quote lettie9]@ProcrastinationIsMySuperPower thank you for that. Could I ask please how was customer service awful? Like you couldn't get through to them on the phone? [/quote]
We opted to have them fit our kitchen; agreed on a quote from the fitter for the "extra" bits that aren't included in the dry fit Wren charge you for. The fitter contracted a couple of days before our kitchen was due to be delivered, leaving us with no fitter, Wren refused to engage with us about changing the date and delivered the kitchen regardless - we did manage to get a fitter sorted, but Wren wouldn't refund their dry fit charge and then lots of bits were missing! None of the appliances ever turned up so we had to buy separately and get a refund afterwards.

Wren customer service operators are very scripted and if you ask a question that deviated from their script they don't know what to do. We did sort it out eventually, but I definitely wouldn't go with Wren again.

Oh god, what a mess, sorry to hear that. Sounds incredibly stressful. I've only had one kitchen fitted about a decade ago. It was IKEA, and we used our own fitter. From memory it was stressful, and IKEA customer service was ok but not great then (woeful now).

I'm torn between Howden's and their weird pricing policy, and Wren and their bad customer service.

@lettie9

My husband is questioning the utility of an eye level oven. He says it's not particularly onerous bending down, and I'm inclined to agree, come to think of it. Or is it one of those things once you've stopped bending, you realise how awful bending used to be?

Yes, I think it's one of those things I much prefer it at eye level so that I can keep an eye on stuff grilling while I use the hob, rather than bobbing up and down. Just personal preference really. I also liked having the hob way from the oven so that they could be used separately by two people without getting in each other's way.

If you want a solid wood kitchen I know of two companies which won’t break the bank - Pineland.co.Uk and Solidwood kitchens - we got wardrobes made by Pineland and we’re very happy.

There’s a beautiful house renovation in SE London where I read the complete renovation blog on Pistonheads - this is the thread where the chap says where he got his kitchen www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=207&t=1713160&i=20
This is the company www.solidwoodkitchencabinets.co.uk.

We’re just finishing off having our Handmade kitchen of Christchurch fitted and we are extremely happy with it - they have a showroom in Claygate if you’re that side of London.

I wouldn’t go for either Howdens or Wren.

Thanks @Qc16 why not Howden's or Wren?

@lettie9 just out of interest why isn't an Aga practical? My DH kept harping on about one, and I said no pour house is small it'll be like an oven all summer - but we discovered the Rayburn 600 series you can set heating/hotwater/oven all on timers, doesn't have to be on 24/7. It's brilliant when used in conjunction with solar (for hot water and to cook on an electric), as it is SO economical - we've also an (old) free standing electric cooker, When I re-do I'm getting a Neff slide and glide to replace our old cooker, not picked a replacement hob yet.

Everhot is a good “eco” option for an Ada type range too. Although you have to take eco with a large pinch of salt given that it’s still a permanently switched on range. Also very expensive. But they look lovely

That's the thing - they're not very eco, and what about in the summertime? It's more the aesthetic I like, but maybe I can compromise on this.

I'm just installing 16 units with Howdens - Tewkesbury sage.

I costed the same up with DIY kitchens with Howdens design then they matched it. £5k ish

Everhots are electric and just run off a normal plug so can be switched off easily and can also be programmed to go into eco mode eg at night and in summer. Mine has an induction hob on one side

@soonshimmie did that include a quartz top and solid wood units? And appliances? Wow

We’ve just had a new kitchen, very small utility, quartz worktop in the kitchen and laminate in the utility plus all new electrical equipment through Howdens and their fairford range and it came in at 18k

Excuse the photos, it was still being finished off when they were taken! Hope this helps you a bit with pricing

@Dogmum40 thank you for sharing, and beautiful kitchen 😊

[quote lettie9]@Dogmum40 thank you for sharing, and beautiful kitchen 😊 [/quote]
No problem, I hope it helped a little with pricing

@Zinnia @Caspianberg @HasaDigaEebowai

I hope you don't mind me tagging you - I'm revisiting this thread as I'm now considering using IKEA carcass with custom solid wood doors. You guys mentioned a few companies - Naked Doors, Foxstow, Superfronts. Any idea on price or would you recommend one over another? Naked Doors has appealed the most so far, purely due to simplicity of website and they do painted wood with grains showing! Help!

Would I design my kitchen first with IKEA, leave out all the doors, and THEN come to these guys to work out what doors we need?

@lettie9

They do do stone yep but not solid wood

You don’t need to get the worktop from the same place as the kitchen.

Worktop express do solid worktops - a very large selection and variety of price/quality to fit budget.

A company called Nerostein do solid stone worktops. I found them very competitive.

A large number of fitting companies will use a specialist worktop fitter.

@lettie9

Sorry everybody - to clarify, I meant IKEA do not do solid wood cabinets. They do indeed do solid oak tops and stone tops. But I want solid wood cabinets too, and would prefer to get everything from one supplier to minimise compatibility issues!

Solid wood doors, but settle for (well built of course) cabinets? That's what we have. If you have them made by a good firm from good carcase materials, they are, as HasDigaEebowai says, more dimensionally stable than wood. That's what we have. Put the money where you can see it, where you can't, pick the best materials for the job. We didn't want real wood carcases; they would have cost a bomb, you can't see the wood anyway unless the door is open and you can get fairly convincing cabinets in a range of 'wood' colours, wood is trickier to fit because it can warp, and you always have problems with end-grain where there may be water. Where we had cabinet ends showing, we just clad the cabinet end with real wood and fitted the work surface above the lot to cover the end grain. If you are main set on 100% wood, then I'd go for completely free-standing cupboards, not units at all. Then you won't go mad trying to get two units to close up when they refuse to.

[quote lettie9]@HasaDigaEebowai I was told that solid wood lasts longer (makes sense) and you can repaint later more easily. Are you suggesting composite units with solid wood doors? Would somewhere like Wren do that? A PP suggested IKEA units with solid wood doors from elsewhere, but that makes me nervous. [/quote]
Marpatt make some super solid wood doors in lots of woods- oak, maple, stained, plain, painted, etc.. Great quality. We have one of their designs. When we moved house, we brought the kitchen with us. It's still like new. The range we bought (years ago) they still do, & when we explained we needed some extra units for the new place, they sold the doors for that to us direct, as the firm which had originally fitted ours is now long gone and we live in another part of the UK. You have to go through a fitting firm for a new kitchen, though. If you like their stuff, they may be able to suggest a fitter near you. www.marpatt.co.uk/

£20k for the kitchen all in, but buy from DIY, an amazing product and you won’t beat the price. Buy appliances and worktops separately.

Bathroom should be about £3k Labour plus suite, maybe slightly more for Labour in london.

@Waspie

It's definitely hard to swap one for the other later without redoing the whole kitchen.

My parents want to swap out their under counter oven and old gas hob for an eye level oven (so they don't have to bend down so much) and induction hob and I've been trying to come up with a way of doing it without removing the whole run of units. I haven't managed to work out a way to do it yet.

I'm designing a kitchen right now, and though I have a freestanding cooker, I'm designing in the possibility of changing to higher oven and separate hob for our 'Old Age'. That was the existing configuration when we moved in here. The reason I didn't scrap my cooker is that a higher oven loses you a lot of work surface. Otherwise I might have gone straight to a higher oven. One thing I would definitely have if I went to a higher oven, is the sort a wheelchair-bound friend had so she could reach the back of her oven - with a door that drops down and then slides away under the oven. A lot easier and safer to get things out than the usual sort, especially if you're short like me, provided you don't need to balance things on the door as you pull them out. Might be worth thinking about for your parents?

We were advised against solid wood carcasses because with the heat and humidity of a kitchen they can warp over time. Instead we have off the shelf carcasses and solid wood doors made by a carpenter and the whole lot has then been sprayed. Looks beautiful and way more expensive than it was. Although unhelpfully I can't remember what we paid. Take other people's prices with a pinch of salt though as prices have rocketed in the last few months due to import problems pushing up the cost of building materials.

If you're in South London I'd really recommend checking out Burge and Gunson near Colliers Wood tube. They're an independent bathroom showroom and were so helpful in helping us maximise our budget with great quality but less expensive options.

I had a Howdens kitchen fitted in my last flat and thought the quality was crap. The soft-close mechanisms on the drawers failed within a year, a couple of the hinges failed, and the drawer fronts are kind of just clipped on the front of the drawers and can become loose. Definitely wouldn't use again.

Thanks everybody. We've decided - for now! - to go for IKEA carcasses with custom built solid wood doors. I like the look of Naked Doors, but there are equally other brands that look good and come recommended as well. Can anyone comment?

The thing to remember with IKEA is that the carcasses don’t have the utility void behind that most other will have (for pipes and wires etc). Depending on your fitter this may not be an issue, but some fitters dislike IKEA for this reason. In addition, many kitchens now arrive fully assembled which makes them stronger overall (glued and dowelled by a machine), and fitting quicker.