New kitchen - where to buy?

[Ladyof2024]

I have never bought a new kitchen before and wondered if people who have bought one recently could recommend a range or company that they were 100% satisfied with.

I need new kitchen base and wall units, worktop, hood and extractor, as mine are falling to bits. Don't want anything too cheap but don't have money to burn, either!

Ikea? B&Q? Wickes? Howdens? Wren Magnet? Another specialist kitchen company?

Many thanks for any replies!

I recommend IKEA kitchens, they come with a 25 year guarantee.

Howdens

Another Howdens

Very much like our Wickes kitchen. Was the only one with all the features we wanted at a reasonable price and it's still pristine 6 years on.

Just bought my 3rd kitchen with DIY kitchens. Great kitchen absolutely horrendous delivery experience. Be aware of their delivery policy, they give you a weeks slot and you only find out that week which day it will be on so I had to take a week off work. The Wednesday of the week it was supposed to arrive got an email to say soz but machine broke down will be next Tuesday now (their small print says they can do this and if you don't take delivery they will charge you). Wasted an entire week of annual leave and had to beg boss for the next Tuesday off - guess what waited in all day and it didn't arrive. Eventually turned up the next day.

I would say DIY kitchens are the Ryanair of the kitchen world, great and cheap enough if you can get to the other end without problem. If you do hit problems they don't want to know. The after sale care is rubbish IME, I had terribly staff attitude.

We bought two kitchens from DIY Kitchens last year - one for us and one for DM. No issues with either kitchen and when we had a query post-sale, they were really helpful.

@Ladyof2024, as PP have said, you can get DIY Kitchens to do a bespoke colour which still works out way cheaper than anywhere else. And the quality of their build is excellent too - superior to even Howdens. When Howdens offer to price match, they usually drop the quality.

If you're daunted by the design process, there are designers who specialise in DIY Kitchens you can hire for a few hundred pounds. With the amount you'll save compared to other kitchens, you'll still end up quids in. Personally though we just used the planner - it was a bit daunting at first as I'd never designed a kitchen before! But once you get started, it's fine and much easier than you'd think.

@MissFritton65 - your kitchen is absolutely stunning!

@grannycake what was ikea like price wise? Do they have people who can design the kitchen for you? Also do they do built in appliances and have fitters? We are in a HA house, the kitchen is falling to bits but they won’t put a new one in just keep repairing the old one (25 years old) so we are at the end of our rope, we won’t be moving anytime soon and I would like a nice kitchen but don’t want to spend silly money either

@AlaskaThunderfuckHiiiiiiiii Our total was just under £6000. We used the design service instore which was excellent as I could choose accessories like work surface and handles after actually seeing them.

My DH fitted ours but if I recall it was about £1200 for them to fit

The cost of ours included a built in oven & microwave as well as an induction hob. Reused existing freestanding fridge and dishwasher

Units were 4 tall units - oven housing, larder cupboard, one fitted with drawers and one with just shelves. Normal height units were drawers under sink with bin housing, and 2 other sets of drawers. We then used 3 more drawer units to make an island

Also included in price was deep stainless steel sink and tap.

We could have chosen cheaper units but liked the look of the most expensive

@grannycake great thanks for that! We will definitely give them a look when we start next
Year

we got ours from Lark and Lark. It’s plain wood and we painted it ourselves. Took ages to paint but love it.

In 2018 it was about £4k 8 base cupboards, 3 tall ones, two upper and two big drawers.

We bought a DIY kitchen last year and are very happy with it. It was a lot cheaper than the quotes we got from Wren, Howdens and B&Q and better made

I have a wrench kitchen. Very happy with it.

We had a local fitter who bought and fitted our Howden's kitchen. He didn't put any mark up on it. They were also really good when we sent back 2 units as we changed our mind.

We had a good designer from Howden's and it was all very reasonable compared to Magnet and 2 local kitchen shops.

It looks great.

Ours is Wren. It looks nice but the quality isn’t great. The customer service was diabolical. The bloke in the store couldn’t have been more attentive, but after it was all ordered we were passed on to a remote ‘team’. The delivery came without the sink. We hadn’t been told it wasn’t it stock. I had to phone up to ask where it was and I was on hold for over two hours. Nobody knew anything and I made multiple phone calls chasing it up, every time with insanely long hold times.

About 10 days or so later, they delivered it again…. except they didn’t. This enormous Wren lorry did a brilliant job reversing down our tiny cul-de-sac and they opened the back doors to reveal…. no sink. It hadn’t been loaded onto the lorry. 🤦‍♀️ The poor delivery men were so baffled as they stared into the back of the almost empty lorry that I struggled not to laugh even though I was exasperated. Eventually the sink arrived on their third attempt. We’d have ordered a different one from Wren or anywhere else in the meantime, but hadn’t realised that it’s a weirdly specific size (double Belfast) and nothing else fitted the space in the units!

Strangely enough, I won’t be using Wren again, much as I like my kitchen.