Kitchen Retailers on a reasonable budget

[acatcalledjohn]

Hoping for a bit of MN help with narrowing down the frankly overwhelming option of kitchen suppliers.

We are looking to replace our drab and dated kitchen. We have bought a kitchen before which was Howdens and we benefitted from a friend’s staff discount on trade prices, making Howdens very affordable. Said friend is retired, and we are in need of a new kitchen. It needs to be on a reasonable budget because it’s one of many jobs we need to do around the house.

Have you bought a kitchen in the last few years you are happy with? Did you use the fitting service offered by the retailer or get your own fitters / DIY? Was it reasonably priced? What did/didn’t you like?

We’re already considering going to Wren, Ikea and B&Q, but who else should we consider? Are Magnet & Benchmarx worth looking at?

I’ve just had an Ikea one put in. My builder fitted it. It’s fine, I mean, it’s a kitchen. And it was a hell of a lot cheaper than everyone else. I’ve never been a kitchen snob. I could have paid 20k, I paid 3. It makes no difference to me, they are just cupboards.

People absolutely love DIY kitchens as they come preassembled. Have a look at some threads. My in laws did the plans from Howdens and then paid for DIY kitchens to Match it up. Independent fitter and FIL DIY and their kitchen is gorgeous

We have a DIY Kitchens and would highly recommend them.

I would say avoid John Lewis like the plague.

I got out for Lark and Lark. A shaker style to hand paint which we did ourselves. Paid about £4k for a large kitchen and utility room.

We are in the.middle of a DIY Kitchens install ans it has been amazing. Fantastic quality, reasonable price. I also hear good things about Better Kitchens.

Wasn’t familiar with DIY kitchens so will investigate further. Same for Lark & lark.

Thank you so far! Further recommendations welcomed!

We’ve had good experiences with wren. They have a lot of choice and are very large so their process and app is good. They have a list of approved fitters - they allocate one to you. You then agree with the fitter any supplementary work (new sockets etc). I priced up quartz worktops and theirs came in the same as two other places. It’s hard to recommend isn’t it as online you only tend to see bad reviews.

We have had a Wren kitchen in for 3 years and very pleased. Lots of choice and they have fitters. Delivery was great, everything placed in our garage, in the correct order for fitting. All went well. Price was good also.

Another vote for Wren. My builder recommended and they were brilliant. Really helped me improve the layout and the price dropped between the order date and installation. They didn’t fit it, so can’t comment on that, but I’ve ended up with a better laid out kitchen for very slightly over half the price quoted by the independent I used in my last house.

We’ve just had a Wren kitchen and we’re very happy with it. We did a lot of research (had quotes/designs from Howdens, Magnet and smaller companies) and Wren was by far the best. Our builders fitted it.

We had a Wickes kitchen fitted last year by our own builder and I'm very happy with it. As the builder is known to us and trusted we had it done while we were away on holiday which was great a lot less hassle. It was a day of hard work putting all the stuff in the new kitchen when we came home but worth it. I also bought the new kettle toaster etc in advance so it was ready to be used the new kitchen straight away. Do your research on line as much as possible to save too many kitchen planning appointments/ quotes.

I have a Wren utility room, it’s fab. My kitchen is Howdens and falling apart so don’t recommend them. My previous Ikea one also wasn’t good quality so can’t recommend them either

I hear good things about DIY kitchens online

To be honest a lot of it is in the fitting, a good fitter will make anything look great, a bad one will bugger it up regardless where it’s from

DIY Kitchens are really good. Come
pre assembled, better quality that the likes of Howdens etc (according to my fitter) and also much cheaper than the major suppliers.

They have a transparent pricing policy, so you can see the exact price of each unit you are buying. Much better than the smoke and mirrors pricing policy of the major suppliers, who use over inflated prices and fake discounts, and basically try to charge you as much as they think they can get away with.

Also had 2 DIY kitchens and would recommend. They were very helpful at the planning stage for the first one as I was doing that myself.

I'm very happy with my Wren kitchen which was fitted by my own builder two years ago.
My kitchen is in a tiny victorian terrace and came fully assembled and everything went to plan. It was good to be able to keep popping in to the showroom to look at knobs and all the other bits.

5 year old kitchen from DIY kitchens we got wickes to do planning and price up one of their kitchens, got a better one from DIY for 2000 pounds less. We had to do a rip out job as the kitchen hadn't been touched for 40 years, so plastering, electrics flooring everything, got our own fitter , units came ready to install pictures taken yesterday

We had a good experience with Smile Kitchens, might be worth a look. They were good value we thought.