CRIKEY!!! - Price of kitchens...

[cartart]

Any recommendations for 'kitchen cupboards direct.com' or similar please?

I am a commercial office fit-out specialist. I have a Howden's account. I regularly order basic looking office kitchenettes.

I asked them for a price for my own (nicer spec) domestic kitchen and passed out! It was in excess of £12k. We have a set budget of ten and that needs to include appliances and flooring etc.

We had a design meeting at Wickes last night - £9.5k with no appliances.

We have been to see IKEA - pricing is more realistic at £6k with a further £750 for some sort of loyalty thing. However, they do NOT do a 500mm or 1000mm base cabinet or wall cupd which rather spoils our preferred design - too many compromises need to accommodated.

WREN will be really big money. Benchmarx will be similar to Wickes and Magnet will be fortunes too.

Any sensible supplier suggestions gratefully received.

Many thanks

[MOBB]

DIY Kitchens always worth a look, reasonable and good quality ime

[banger54]

Howdens are decent value in my opinion - assuming you have a good trade discount.

We paid 9k in 2018 for a fairly large Pistonheads director kitchen comprising of 24 units (doors and caracasses). Excluding fitting, worktops, sinks, taps, appliances and additional joinery. I daren't think about the overall price but inc appliances fitting, flooring and decorating it will have been over three times that.

Maybe I'm wrong, but at the time I subjectively saw Wren, Wickes and Magnet as a step down in quality and potentially a step up in price compared to Howdens.

Of course you can go much more expensive- we were quoted £55k for units and worktops alone at a bespoke place.

12K inc flooring, appliances (fridge, freezer, Single oven, hob, extractor, dishwasher) does not seem over the top at all to me- even as a Northerner!

Edited by banger54 on Thursday 15th January 10:57

[Countdown]

I have to say I don't think £12k is extreme.

My brother paid for a new kitchen for mum and dad which cost £16k, another brother also paid something similar for a larger kitchen but not including any applicances.

[Lotobear]

Watch out with IKEA - IIRC they don't include a 50mm service void behind the units so they have to be cut for pipe and waste runs. Unless they've since changed the design.

[CSR Performance]

Mad isn't it. We have been slowly conditioned to think that kitchens and bathrooms are expensive and that's the going rate.

If it was solid wood carcasses, then £12k might be more acceptable, but I imagine Howdens and the like are just faced chipboard?

We live in a society now that will spend £150 on trainers, £15k on a kitchen, £200 on a jacket, but get pissy when they are quoted £30 for a set of decent quality brake pads or £150 for a branded tyre. Makes absolutely no sense to me.

Anyway, rant over

Can you fudge your Ikea kitchen with an off the shelf 500/1000mm unit from elsewhere? For example: https://rdfurniture.co.uk/shop/base-1000-assembled...

[OutInTheShed]

DIY kitchens are worth a look.
Can be under £100 for a door+ drawer front

BeanQueue do some cheap carcasses.
under £100 per door i.e 500mm of cupboard.

There are a few online worktop places.
Some OK laminate for under £200 per 3m delivered.

All the other stuff adds up, but one of the young chaps recently DIY'd a pretty nice kitchen for under £4k.

If you start needing to do lots of electrics or want the must have fashions, then it's very easy to spend a lot more.
Often for something that's not really nice, not really practical and won't last.
People will be ripping out those horrible slabs of grey plastic before long.

[cartart]

Lotobear said:

Watch out with IKEA - IIRC they don't include a 50mm service void behind the units so they have to be cut for pipe and waste runs. Unless they've since changed the design.

Yes, this we were told about by a friend. It will be a problem.

[cartart]

CSR Performance said:

Mad isn't it. We have been slowly conditioned to think that kitchens and bathrooms are expensive and that's the going rate.

If it was solid wood carcasses, then £12k might be more acceptable, but I imagine Howdens and the like are just faced chipboard?

We live in a society now that will spend £150 on trainers, £15k on a kitchen, £200 on a jacket, but get pissy when they are quoted £30 for a set of decent quality brake pads or £150 for a branded tyre. Makes absolutely no sense to me.

Anyway, rant over

Can you fudge your Ikea kitchen with an off the shelf 500/1000mm unit from elsewhere? For example: https://rdfurniture.co.uk/shop/base-1000-assembled...

Exactly this - it's a few bits of chipboard panel and an MDF painted door, crazy.

[Nezquick]

There's a kitchen place near me with a fancy looking showroom and somewhere which seemed rather pricey but they had "offers" on the last week or so with 70% reductions on kitchens. I thought great, should be some decent bargains to be had.

No.

Their 70% reductions were on kitchens with original RRP's of (and I st you not) £145,000! The sale price was just over £40k!

Utterly ridiculous.

[cartart]

MOBB said:

DIY Kitchens always worth a look, reasonable and good quality ime

Much appreciated fella - that looks worth a look indeed. Cheers

[blueg33]

Our hob has just failed, one halogen burner has failed. Replacement burner unavailable, so need a new hob. Wife says if we are having a new hob we may as well have a new kitchen and utility........................

I made my feelings known - she is no longer speaking to me so every cloud etc

[LennyM1984]

CSR Performance said:

Mad isn't it. We have been slowly conditioned to think that kitchens and bathrooms are expensive and that's the going rate.

If it was solid wood carcasses, then £12k might be more acceptable, but I imagine Howdens and the like are just faced chipboard?

It is indeed mad but...

I'm currently making my own kitchen and using high quality materials (ply and solid wood), I'm in for less than 5% of that (including the door pulls).

However, it is time consuming. Having seen some of the cabinets, a few people have now asked if I will make a kitchen for them (I'm a management consultant not a skilled carpenter) and if I were to charge for my time, the cost would rocket up.

This "time" element and the convenience of buying from Howdens (etc) is why they are able to charge so much.

For me (aside from needing a project to stop me from being bored) part of building it myself was due to the fact that even the more "high end" kitchens were just MDF/chipboard with a nice facing.

[BORNXenon]

cartart said:

Lotobear said:

Watch out with IKEA - IIRC they don't include a 50mm service void behind the units so they have to be cut for pipe and waste runs. Unless they've since changed the design.

Yes, this we were told about by a friend. It will be a problem.

Ikea do a specific 'Sink Unit' which does have a service void behind, which works well if all of your pipes are in the same spot, unfortunately, the way our house was thrown together meant that this unit wasn't going to work for us so I ended up butchering a corner unit instead.
Wasn't the end of the world, I had a plumber relocated what he could, unfortunately our water meter was in such a place that cutting into the corner unit base was unavoidable, but it's still better than what preceded it.

I like the Ikea stuff, the lack of a 500mm unit is a pain, but I managed to work around it and couldn't be happier with the result, cost about 6k all in, with the worktops coming from Worktops Express, me doing most of the work except for an electrician putting in extra sockets and the aforementioned plumber.

[LooneyTunes]

Pretty much the same thing discussed earlier this week: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

[LooneyTunes]

Nezquick said:

There's a kitchen place near me with a fancy looking showroom and somewhere which seemed rather pricey but they had "offers" on the last week or so with 70% reductions on kitchens. I thought great, should be some decent bargains to be had.

No.

Their 70% reductions were on kitchens with original RRP's of (and I st you not) £145,000! The sale price was just over £40k!

Utterly ridiculous.

How real were the original prices? You can go up into the stratosphere when it comes to kitchens, especially if you go big on appliances. Mate of mine managed to hit £250k… he can afford it, but it still seems like crazy money.

[Chris Type R]

Even the off the shelf stuff from Wickes has become much more expensive than one would expect. Quality seems to be worse than 10-20 years ago.

There's a YT video that I shared recently on one of the other threads where a chap has bought, installed and compared kitchens from the regular UK suppliers. I'll try and add the link here once I'm at PC.

ETA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkNmhyEFX5U

Edited by Chris Type R on Thursday 15th January 14:52

[PhilboSE]

Chris Type R said:

Even the off the shelf stuff from Wickes has become much more expensive than one would expect. Quality seems to be worse than 10-20 years ago.

I undertook a way-too-extensive investigation into various “standard” kitchen suppliers last year and actually IMO Wickes were at the top end of that market on quality, but were also at the toppier end on price.

I went with DIY Kitchens in the end, made a few self-inflicted mistakes which cost money & time to resolve due to their model, but the end result is excellent.

[Chris Type R]

PhilboSE said:

I undertook a way-too-extensive investigation into various standard kitchen suppliers last year and actually IMO Wickes were at the top end of that market on quality, but were also at the toppier end on price.

I went with DIY Kitchens in the end, made a few self-inflicted mistakes which cost money & time to resolve due to their model, but the end result is excellent.

Was this the off-the-shelf (literally) stuff or the stuff they supply when you use their design service - I believe they're different.

[Mont Blanc]

LooneyTunes said:

Nezquick said:

There's a kitchen place near me with a fancy looking showroom and somewhere which seemed rather pricey but they had "offers" on the last week or so with 70% reductions on kitchens. I thought great, should be some decent bargains to be had.

No.

Their 70% reductions were on kitchens with original RRP's of (and I st you not) £145,000! The sale price was just over £40k!

Utterly ridiculous.

How real were the original prices? You can go up into the stratosphere when it comes to kitchens, especially if you go big on appliances. Mate of mine managed to hit £250k he can afford it, but it still seems like crazy money.

There seemed to a ridiculous arms-race regarding kitchen prices about 8-10 years ago. In the sector I worked in at that time, it became a willy waving contest over how much people could claim to have spent on their kitchen. Someone would have a £50k kitchen fitted, then someone else would have an £80k kitchen fitted... then someone else would have an entirely bespoke solid wood kitchen made for eleventy million pounds, and then it became all about features such as marble ice bucket trays in the middle of the island, and all that stuff.

Then came the whole two kitchens nonsense.