HKOC experiences and cost

[ThingsWeLost]

We’ve had a very reasonable quote from handmade kitchens or Christchurch for units. They gave us details of local fitters and painters but obviously I can’t get anyone to return my calls so I’m a bit unsure about the ballpark figure for units, fitting,
painting, sink, worktops, handles etc. Was anyone surprised by how much the budget blew out when everything was added in?

We’ve had one other quite expensive quote from John Lewis of hungerford. They’ve designed a beautiful kitchen but it’s more than we hoped to spend and I suspect they’ve underquoted a bit. Their quote doesn’t include plumbing/electrical or removing the old kitchen and looks like we’ll need to remove the floor to relocate sink and oven, the floor is vinyl tiles so I don’t think they can be replaced once they’ve been removed!

I had a HMKOC kitchen installed coming up two years ago and am still very pleased with how it looks and how well it's faring. I've found the quality to be great and I've never experienced any issues with dents (I have 3 kids and a dog btw so it does get plenty of knocks!) In answer to your specific question about the full cost of the kitchen on top of the units we paid:

£2.5 k for fitting and painting
£3k for quartz worktops but I've used the suppliers before so got a good price for those
Electrics were done by a family friend but were around another £1k because we moved pretty much everything and had new lighting
Plumbing was included in the fitting price and wasn't a big change just moved the sink round the corner.
Handles I got from Amazon (!) and came to about £40
Appliances were another £3kish I think
Flooring was done as part of a wider job including knocking 3 rooms including a supporting wall into one and the whole project together came to around £40k but I'm not sure that's helpful!

I was luck and got a cancellation appointment so only had to wait about 4 weeks for my units and had a free design appointment which was easy and really helpful with a few specific questions I had around cupboard sizes etc. To be fair I had a very good idea going in of exactly what I wanted so they just drew up my design with the right unit types.

We paid about 7k for the units if that gives you an idea of the scale of the kitchen.

HTH.

We have a large kitchen and utility from hmkoc. Quality is overall excellent although i do need to go back to them about a drawer where the wood has split.

I think i got ripped off on fitting as i paid abiut £5k for that. Worktops were 6k and painting quotes about 5k. We painted it outselves with little green paint.

I'm very pleased with it.
.

I spent

Sorry was trying to say that i spent a lot overall but have things like perrin and rowe taps, shaws sink, pantry, larder, handles were over £700 alone (mixture of plank and armac martin), 2 dishwashers, fridge was over £3k, expensive range over. So there are places you can cut back or in my case as i spent less on units, splurge. I think for large kitchen and utility including painting, worktops, appliances and fitting we spent approx £40-50k. The units were £17k. Hard to be exact as we had builders in generally too.

My kitchen from e.g tom howley would be well over £100k (I got a
quote).

We are very happy with our HMKOC kitchen. It was actually purchased in 2015 with the intention of fitting it in our last house, then we changed our minds about where we were living and sold the house before ever fitting the cabinets.

It was eventually fitted - by us - in our new (very old) house during 2018. Although the space is fairly big after knocking two rooms through, we spent less than £10k on the cabinets which included items such as a faux stone look cooker hood. My DH built our island using a mix of HMKOC cabinets and shelving he constructed so that saved loads.

We painted ours ourselves (F&B eggshell) and saved £££ shopping around for the iroko and microcement worktops, double Belfast sink etc, although our taps were £700+ and the pewter handles weren't cheap either.

Back then the lead time was far shorter (4 months, iirc). A few years ago we enquired about additional cabinetry and the lead time had increased to six months which we felt was too long to wait so we bought a vintage larder instead. Nine months is a bit crazy imho, but as we've had no issues with the quality if I were looking to order a whole kitchen now, I'd probably just bite the bullet!

Thanks everyone! This all very helpful. We paid the deposit to lock in the sale price, they sent me a list of cabinets that would replace the current kitchen like for like (not the final design because I don’t want the same design as current) and it came in at about £13k in the sale. We’ve got appliances but that’s it, so it looks like the budget might double at the very least. I managed to get a reply from one fitter, but I’m still waiting for his quote. The delivery date was in October so yes, a 9 month lead time.

For those who did their own painting (@LibertyLily @nomoneytreehere ) do you paint them after fitting? Is it easy?? I’m keen to save money any way I can, DH is not handy at all. I’m the handy one in the house, but mostly picking things up from YouTube

@serialrenovator I had a look on the website, there aren’t too many pictures of their kitchens to look at, which Instagram account did you find them through?

It is easy if you use good quality paint. I painted my utility in farrow and ball and kitchen in little green. Much prefer the little green paint. Def use the manufacturers undercoat.

We haven't finished painting yet. I still have the final top coat to put on..... Despite what hmkoc say i wish we had primed before they fitted and then just needed to do the 2 top coats.

It takes ages to do it nicely. Its turned into my hobby.

I would oil first (we used 1 coat only of osmo), then prime. Good quality brushes including tiny ones for the fiddly bits and then good foam or microfibre small rollers. Do as much as you can before fitting (will need a couple of days as paint will be soft otherwise). Particularly backs of doors, sides etc. I wish we had got carpenter to drill holes for handles but not fit as we ended up having to take them off. But i think my carpenter was a bit of a twat.

But i would say i have become obsessed on finish. A friend used painters and has drip marks all over the place. In fact i looked in the neptune showroom and one of their recently refreshed displays had drip marks everywhere. Mine is perfect!

We’ve had our HMKOC for a year so far and it still looks perfect.

Our units were around £25k, then £4.5k to fit, then £5.5k to paint them (the guy was excellent, he used a particular type of paint was hardened), the Silestone worktop was around £6.5k, the Armac Martin handles I chose were £1.5k trade price, the antique mirror splashback was around £2k. I added a gas range, Quooker tap, Shaws sink and integrated the dishwasher and fridges. So I spent just over £50k for the kitchen and utility versus quotes I’d received of £80k+ just for the kitchen.

The downside was the I had to do my own design and I had to do my own measuring which was very daunting!!! I had 2 days when the cabinets first arrived thinking that I’d fucked up the height of the ceiling. Thankfully it was fine.

Then lining up all of the different trades was quite stressful, particularly when the kitchen painter arrived on the same day as the plasterers and they had a massive argument about dust 🤦🏼‍♀️

I wouldn’t hesitate to buy another HMKOC kitchen again in my next house. I don’t think it will be as stressful next time!! I ended up ordering more units for another part of the house and that order came much quicker than the original date they gave me. Sometimes they get a space when other people postpone delivery.

@PeachesPudding where did you get your antique mirrror from? We want to do this too.

Thanks @PeachesPudding that’s really helpful!

I’m freaking out a bit about the measurements too. I’ve got a wren design/plan for the existing kitchen that the house seller gave me. I sent that to HMKOC but as part of their design service they ask you to check it. So I did and my measurements are a few cms different to the plan, I’ve checked it a million times. The ceiling height is off by almost 5cm

@PeachesPudding would you be kind enough to tell me roughly how big your space was, and was this the sale prices for the cabinetry at HMKOC please? I’ve got a quote out with them but I think they were swamped with their last sale so nothing back yet.

Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but wanted to reach out to other HKOC owners about an installation issue we have.

Has anyone fitted an integrated fridge with a fixed hinge, as opposed to a sliding one? We can't understand how it's meant to work, as the butt hinges on the cabinet don't flex like the hinge on the fridge does. HKOC just said its positioning, but we can't see how position would help

Any advice?

Could anyone that ordered their own quartz worktops recommend where they got them from? The trade supplier HMKOC recommend doesn’t cover London where we live. Our HMKOC is due in Feb, can’t wait!

We got ours from here, but didn't pick quartz in the end, we got stone. They arranged for us to visit a nearby stone yard and see the slabs of stone and quartz. Couldn't be happier with the service www.toucanstone.co.uk

We used them. Cost was about 5k for cabinets in the sale.

I really used all the tricks in the book here. They will make a unit to a custom width up to a certain amount for the same price.

I reduced the number of units we needed by around 30% by doing extra wide drawers and wider cabinets . They do look very cool aswell.

As for extra cost we spent about 1k on fitting (mates rates). Painted ourselves with coat.

Appliances bought ex display/ return or cosmetic damage. Ie our fridge has external casing dents but it’s fitted so no one sees that and we got it for half price. The smeg range was 50% off because there was a burn mark on the induction top. Managed to get that off with a few sessions of magic eraser and pink stuff paste.

Hardware corston architectural which was a bit spendy. Less than £500

Cheap stainless steel sink as a sink is a sink. Even the expensive ones these days are quite low steel content (you can check with a magnet) so it’s pointless spending there.

Tap was c. £400 from Perrin and Rowe.

Worktops 3.5k quartz but we have a full continuous backsplash and it’s a large run of quartz. Needed to buy two whole slabs. We also have some quartz shelves in the cupboards for drippy shelves (ie. Appliances like microwave and The open honey/ balsamic/ oil etc).
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Yes we had this. No idea how they resolved it. Fitter spent a day grumpy and swearing 🤣

Sorry for brining up an old post, but how difficult did you find fitting and painting the kitchen yourselves. We have ordered HMKOC for kitchen and utility, and it is due mid Feb but struggling to get a quote for fitting (got one quote for over £6k just to fit, no painting!). We are handy with DIY but have never done a kitchen and just really worried about making a dogs dinner and not having enough finesse and ruining it. Our order is £18k to give an idea of size.
alternatively if anyone has any fitter recommendations for North London it would be hugely appreciated!