Anyone had their kitchen redone with just new benchtops and cupboard/drawer fronts?

[ampere]

Am considering this option.

General layout is fine, and base units are all OK. I believe it will cost us half of what a new kitchen will, BUT has anyone actually done this? Were you happy with the results?

sorry no help, but will watch this thread as we are thinking of doing the same, but keeping the old doors and painting them

Yes I have done it and yes I am happy but wish we'd changed the tiles too

Measure your doors etc very carefully - we noted our measurements and took a tour of the big DIY chains and the wickes doors matched the sizes perfectly, so it must have been a wickes kitchen orginally. We ordered doors, pelmets, cornice, plints, end pieces and drawer fronts from wickes and we got the new worktop from B&Q. We also got new oven, gas hob and sink.

DP is quite good with woodwork/carpentry stuff so did all the fitting of the doors, end pieces etc plus put the oven and extractor fan in. We got a kitchen fitter in to do the worktop and fit the sink and hob (he arranged the gas fitter for that) and he also did the pelmets and cornices.

The most difficult bit was finding a fitter to fit the worktop - they tend to deislike doing small jobs and are only interested in fitting a whole new kitchen. However the guy who did it was really good so no problems in the end.

All in all I'd say it cost about £4k, it's an average sized kitchens and the wickes doors were more expensive than B&Q/homebase but are solid oak and lovely.

Thanks.

Our doors appear to be non standard!

We have been quoted about £4500 inc a new sink, tap, hob top, hood but not a new oven or fridge.

We are fine tooth combing the quote now. The issue is the bloke concerend does seem to do a fair amount of teeth sucking about certain things like bench top lighting under the eye level units. To me that's an essential! He also doesn't have a vast range of bench tops but I think we'd be prepared to compromise for the money as another bloke (new kitchen fitter) said he thought it'd cost us £9k to redo from scratch (but again, same oven and fridge).

He ALSO said one shouldn't spend more than 2.5% of the value of the house on a new kitchen which puts his estimate over!

That's a staggering amount of money ! Are they gold plated?

Most kitchen doors are 720mm high and multiples of 100mm wide (less a little for tolerance) ie. 296, 396 etc. Ikea are different but I thought nearly all UK carcases are about the same. Out of interest what are your sizes typically?

The undercabinet lighting may be expensive if there is no wiring for it. Can you use a chain of Ikea fluorescents and plug them into an unobtrusive socket?

Depends if you want to shop around - all kitchen fittings can be bought direct from internet suppliers if you know what you want.

We were going to do this, and then realised that the problem with the kitchen was the bad layout, not the cupboard doors (although they were in bad nick). So then we totally redid the entire kitchen, and it was certainly worth the money. There was a place called 'Just Doors' that we liked the look of, though, and we were thinking about using 'Granite Transformations' to cover the existing worktop.

We had a quote for this a few years ago, but realised that it wouldn't cost very much more to have the kitchen refitted. I think we were quoted about £5k for new door/drawer fronts and worktops, and a new kitchen cost £8k, but that included all appliances and some extra stuff.

We are currently doing this - ours is a bigger layout and still some of the old due to an extension but the existing b and q carcasses were perfect - as we have progressed we have found that apparently most base units are standard size but the wall units size differ stire to store eg wickes, b and q, howdens etc...., anyhows we have b and q from 7 yr ago and it so appears they had a yr or two ago annoyingly changed suppliers for carcasses so now the wall units are out by about 4mm enough to have had to make us shell out for new wall cabs too. Anyhows we quoted on complete kitchen and it was £5200 not inc fitting and with dh doing it with new worktops and doors and some new wall cabinets its come in at about £1500 which in comparison we is v please with. So far so good. It helps we had sockets in right places and hob and sink ir remaining in same place too.

justdoors.co.uk do made to measure doors quite reasonably I beleive.