Just had our first ever quote for a kitchen and it seems a lot for a few chipboard cabinets with glossy doors.
I know they’re allowed to knock more off if you haggle but I don’t really know how low they could go?
If the original quote was for £10k, how low would you try and get them? Has anyone ever got themselves a great deal off by haggling?

How big? How many drawer units? Glass cabinets, integrated appliances and how many / sort? Integrated lighting? What sort of work top, does it include tiling, flooring and fitting?

It probably is a bit high. Best rhing to do is to use their design services and thwn buy units from the likes if DIY kitchens and find a good carpenter to fit it.

Ikea have a kitchen planning tool that will gice you a price for the units only.

Price up the equivalent configuration using a b&q brochure and add in £75 per unit fitting charge plus £75 per worktop join to get a rough idea of a base price.

Sat thanks, but it’s higher than your budget. They will drop almost certainly.

http://www.diy-kitchens.com are fixed price, you can spec exactly what you want, needs a few hours playing around online but helps if you already have a plan, units come fully assembled & it’s not too hard to join them all together level. Wooden worktops from http://www.worktop-express.co.uk and again not too tricky to do, or just pay someone to cut & fit.

My good lady got about 50% off a b&q kitchen by playing them off against other suppliers. Like a terrier she was, joy to behold 🙂

Never take their first offer.

If you have a mate with a trade account with Howdens, get a quote of them. The price offered from them will depend how much business that account does with them.

The Ikea one isn’t a bad idea will give you a good idea of what the cheapest units should cost.

We got no discount at all. But we didn’t use one of these flashy companies with big bright showrooms and smarmy ‘kitchen designers’ dressed in cheap suits, who have constant offers and sales.
We got ours from a small local supplier* who knew exactly what we wanted, had a bigger range of sizes of units to fit our space exactly and could modify units to fit if we needed it. I installed it myself and we employed tradesmen to do the odd jobs we couldn’t like the electrics, gas, and the floor.
Ours was £12k all in including plastering the whole room, electrics, gas, all the NEFF appliances, fridge, solid wood units, quartz worktops, tiled floor, paint, the lot. It’s a fairly big room too.

(The fridge is where the bin is in these pics, big plumbed in USA style thing)

IMG_0705 by PeterPoddy, on Flickr

IMG_0707 by PeterPoddy, on Flickr

IMG_0710 by PeterPoddy, on Flickr

* ABC Magnum in Aldershot if anyone needs a recommendation. They are superb.

Cheers Pete, in the market for a new kitchen and am local to Aldershot. Did you get them to do any kitchen planning etc for you or had you already got all that sorted ?

We paid about £1k or £1.5k for the kitchen and bits, plus £1.5k for fitting and decorating from a trusted tradesman – that including getting the floor tiled.

Small kitchen, veneer units and tops from B&Q – but still way cheaper than a kitchen company would have charged for equivalent I’m sure.

Depends what you want. Cheap and cheerful then go for Ikea or bargain with Wickes or B and Q.

If you want better quality then I would go for Howdens or DIY kitchens (Made by Ultima). They are not flat pack and have doors fitted for starters.

I recently used DIY kitchens and can highly recommend them. No nonsense or bargaining and the quality is spot on.

We had a quote from Howdens but I wasn’t impressed, price was more than double DIY kitchens and the guy had no ideas of his own, he just drew what we suggested but with 50cm units in spaces that were only 48cm wide.

I got the standard every day “50%” off the units from Magnet. Total cost of units and worktops was something like £3k IIRC. Fitted it all myself.

Kitchen by brf, on Flickr

We went with a local firm who build their own cabinets etc and I fitted it myself;

In terms of haggling. I looked at cabinet costs mostly as they were directly in their control (electrical stuff and worktops they have less amrgin on I’d guess).

So Cabinets, got about 30% off
Electricals, they matched the best online price + I got an additional £500 cashback.
Worktop – wasn’t much room for movement but got 15% off.

Best bit about dealing with a local firm was that there was a couple of issues with marked doors etc on delivery and they were able to source replacements quickly – one of their staff dropped them in on his way home from work.

bought from this place http://www.thekitchenstore.co.uk/showroom-brighton-hove/

Edit] biggest thing I would say is *really* think about the plans and the measurements etc – easy to say it’ll be ok when it won’t be…

If you ended up going the Homebase/B&Q route you should relatively easily be able to play them off each other to get 50%+ off the list price for a whole kitchen.

We did a Homebase and got a family friend to fit all the units. Worked out ok but couldn’t tel you the cost overall – probably £5k for a smallish kitchen all in inc appliances.

Have to say footflaps, after your bunker shed build I was expecting something a little more ‘michelin star’….

We went with Ikea precisely because I couldn’t be bothered with all the games around 50% off this week only [strike]every week of the year[/strike] that a lot of kitchen suppliers seem to play. It was half the price of the ‘60% off offer if you buy before the end of the week’ quote that we got from homebase.

A friend got 80% off the original price from Howdens so there is certainly space to haggle.

Howdens dont really worry about the % dicount given, for them it s about the % profit made, if they get the % they want they will give you any discount (ex howdens kitchen designer)

Howdens trade price is 80% off retail RRP, which nobody pays.

Personally I got mine from a local kitchen shop which was only a little bit more than Howden’s but much better quality (howdens kitchens are designed to be very easy to fit, so had extra pilot holes etc which I didn’t like).

I also got my worktops from worktops express, took them 3 goes to get them to me undamaged though and some of them weren’t great so not sure I would recommend them.

If you like John Lewis kitchen, they appear to get them from Mereway which are around 1/2 the price, so might be worth a look.

Bought ours from Ikea, they don’t really do haggling, but are cheap to start with. Plus in the offer we got 10% of the value back as a gift card, which filled me with horror at the prospect of another Sunday in the warehouse, but is at least useful for bits to fit it out.

Just need a fitter who doesn’t let us down now 🙄

Just need a fitter who doesn’t let us down now

what part of the country are you in?as I still know quite a few good fitters in staffordshire area who’s details i can pass on, a couple of whom may be ‘lurking’ on here

I found Howden’s to be a nightmare for pricing, they give you a quote and at the same time say ‘but we can do a deal’ which was dependant on their end of sales period results so some months they may be more receptive than others – so you don’t know what you may or may not pay for the kitchen so you can’t really budget

we got ours from pineland in northwich, Mrs Ed was really pleased with them

Wooden worktops from http://www.worktop-express.co.uk and again not too tricky to do, or just pay someone to cut & fit.

We used these guys, was about 50% cheaper than the Wickes / Howdens / B&Q surfaces we got quoted on.

We bought a solid wood B&Q kitchen (units & doors) in the end after quotes on pretty much the same thing from Wickes and Howdens as well. Builder was impressed with the quality. Our builder had a Tradepoint discount which saved us an additional 40% or so on the unit we wanted. Bought appliances separately via the online retailers, used TopCashBack to do this as well to save a bit more.

We got our worktops from worktop-express and really pleased with them. I think we got the original recommendation from here.

what part of the country are you in?as I still know quite a few good fitters in staffordshire area who’s details i can pass on, a couple of whom may be ‘lurking’ on here

North Hants unfortunately!

The kitchen shop was a big national one but not any of the ones mentioned here. Yesterday was the last day of their “January sale” as well so all the discounts were applied and it was still £9.5k WITHOUT appliances. Not much more than a galley kitchen with breakfast bar really.The quartz worktops were nearly £3.5k! Really nice salesman though. We’re waiting for the Magnet quote to come through and I bet it’s even more. I’ve actually got an account at Howdens and they were going to be my next stop. Had a look at DIY Kitchens at the weekend and it did work out much cheaper, so good to hear people recommending them. Just have to convince the wife that she doesn’t actually like the kitchen she saw last night.

Try a (coupleof ) local kitchen place for an all-in price; ie give ’em the keys and come back when all in and working type deal.

May be cheaper than you think, especially if you give them a tight/realistic budget first.

We were very fortunate to be in IKEA on the day they sold their display kitchens. £2100 for the lot including massive induction hob, dishwasher, fridge freezer, 9cm extractor hood, all cabinets, drawers and divider thingies, worktops, sink and taps…. everything.

Catch was it had to be taken out by me on a single day but that was no biggie.

Sold two surplus units and the extractor to pay for solid oak worktops…

Very fortunate to be in the store early on the right day..

I did a cheap re-jig of the kitchen in my flat many years ago. I only used cheap veneer worktop (I was a student at the time) but I bought a jig and did all the joints properly so no metal strips which was very satisfying. Not sure it would be worth the stress levels on expensive worktops! Although I guess wooden ones don’t have the rolled edge to allow for?

Cheers Pete, in the market for a new kitchen and am local to Aldershot. Did you get them to do any kitchen planning etc for you or had you already got all that sorted ?

He came round, measured the room exactly, advised us of what they could supply and alter for us and planned it out with a reasonably detailed quote. Units, appliances and work tops were just over £8000 if I recall correctly. £2600 of that is work top and the oven, hob, extractor and microwave must have been around £1500. We shopped around and couldn’t get them significantly cheaper so ordered the lot all together. The clincher was the corner sink unit which, at them time, we couldn’t find anywhere else.

I’m pretty close to Aldershot myself so will definitely check them out. They’re going to be pretty busy I would imagine with all the flooding round here. Plenty of people will unfortunately be needing new ones.