Kitchen fitting costs

[essayer]

Had a few guys in to quote now on our kitchen (10 floor units, 4 wall units, solid wood worktop). We are buying all the stuff ourselves.

Best price so far is £3200 for all labour..

- two walls need replastering
- retiling floor/walls
- disposal of old kitchen
- adding new sockets, oven supply, downlights, light pelmet
- adding/moving plumbing for sink, washing machine and dishwasher
- removing a radiator
- capping old gas pipe and running new pipe to hob
- polypipe-style underfloor heating (maybe electric)
- fitting units and worktop, sink etc

The kitchen is only about 6m x 3m so it is not a huge room.
£3200 seems like a lot, but if you start totalling the man-days I suppose it can quickly add up! We are near-ish London.

Should I continue the merry-go-round of quotes ?

[B17NNS]

Doesn't sound unreasonable considering your location along with the amount of work and different trades involved.

[RC1]

Depends on the amount of man days... some of the tasks above are low single digit man days i would have thought

[mattnunn]

We paid our Joiner £150 a day to fit the units and worktops and fix the island in and several other bits that I would have undoubtly fked up, took him about 5 days in total (mostly weeknds) but we had a seperate spark whose about the same daily rate. I did do an equal amount of man hours myself fetching/carrying/painting etc...

[essayer]

Should I be expecting a breakdown by task? None of the quotees have done so.

B&Q wanted £5500 ! plus the kitchen !

[singlecoil]

If you were closer to Bucks the people I use to install kitchens would want to put in a quote, and it would probably be a bit better than that, but not by an awful lot. Tricky without seeing the kitchen and assessing the level of difficulty, and the potential for things to go wrong (it can be amazing what one finds when removing an old kitchen).

To sum up, if the people quoting appear to be both professional and friendly, and have good references, then I would be inclined to use them at the price quoted.

[Craikeybaby]

Based on your list and what we paid our kitchen fitters I would have guessed about £3k, so looks about right to me.

[RC1]

essayer said:

Should I be expecting a breakdown by task? None of the quotees have done so.

B&Q wanted £5500 ! plus the kitchen !

i you dont ask you dont get!

i personally always ask for line by line and if they do it then great, its someone i can work with. if not then fine, move on

i just want to know what im paying for what bit... like speccing a car from the factory i suppose!

[singlecoil]

Most people in this line of work would not break a quote down, and although I'm not in that line of work myself, I can understand why. Otherwise they would find themselves in a situation where the customer says things like 'my cousin is a plasterer and he says he could do that part for £300' (for instance).

I would expect a contractor, if asked, to provide say two prices, one for the job including a specified part of it, and one without if the customer wanted to do that themselves.

[RC1]

but they must know the price of the constituent parts themselves to provide the aggregated estimate in the first place?

[Deva Link]

Does the price include VAT and can they provide the necessary gas and elec certifications?

I think the price is pretty good if they're going to take care of everything - things like getting small amounts of plastering done for a reasonable price can be a nightmare.

[zcacogp]

RC1 said:

but they must know the price of the constituent parts themselves to provide the aggregated estimate in the first place?

They may not; an estimate for the whole job will be based on various assumptions. Some bits will be quicker and cheaper than expected, some longer and more expensive, but they will even out over the whole job.

To provide a line-by-line breakdown of costs would invite the customer to pay less for the ones you under-estimated, but not pay the extra on the ones you over-estimated, leading to a shortfall in the overall cost.


Oli.

[singlecoil]

zcacogp said:

RC1 said:

but they must know the price of the constituent parts themselves to provide the aggregated estimate in the first place?

They may not; an estimate for the whole job will be based on various assumptions. Some bits will be quicker and cheaper than expected, some longer and more expensive, but they will even out over the whole job.

To provide a line-by-line breakdown of costs would invite the customer to pay less for the ones you under-estimated, but not pay the extra on the ones you over-estimated, leading to a shortfall in the overall cost.

Pretty much what I would have said.

[AmitG]

I got my kitchen done recently.

Room size approx 3.5m x 3.5m. About 8 wall units and 8 base units (from B&Q) covering 2 out of 4 walls. I ripped out most of the old kitchen myself. I also supplied all the materials and disposed of the waste myself.

• Remove 2 remaining base units
• Remove old wall tiles
• Adjust gas and water pipework (no major replumbing; just adjustment of length and installation of isolation valves)
• Re-skim 1.5 walls
• Install new wall units
• Install new base units
• Install worktops
• Install sink and taps including all plumbing
• Install wall tiles
• Filling/sanding/painting of walls where not tiled
• Lay slate tile floor
• Finishing touches (sealant, grouting etc.)
• Replace electrical fittings (faceplates only; no rewiring)

Total cost 2.3K GBP.

[Jasandjules]

Well, plastering is quite expensive on it's own and is an art.
Adding sockets etc and tiling are also skilled and expensive. Same with gas. I am guessing this guy has a couple of mates who will do the sub contracting work for the bits he is not qualified for.
So it doesn't sound that bad to me including all the fitting (I take it that's including VAT)