and are you impressed.

Looking at putting a new one in at our place and looking for ideas beyond IKEA, Howdens, B&Q and Wickes.

Ive bought both my last two from Ikea. I find them excellent quality, easy to work with and of an elegant simplicity in styling that shouldnt date too quickly. Good value for money. The top one I think cost less than £2k excluding appliances IIRC.

Ikea

I must admit, I havent heard / read any bad reviews of the IKEA stuff and it certainly seems good VFM. I take it the carcasses take standard integrated appliances

Howdens

I bought one from these guys.

Homepage

Not cheap but the quality and service was the best of all of the contractor on our house rebuild.

Then we had kids and moved 😐

I built ours from 8’x4′ mdf sheets, odd shape kitchen meant that it was the most cost effective way to make best use of the space. Doors were spray painted by a local company.

magnet for cabinets and appliances-online for, er, appliances

B&Q – fitted 18 months ago and holding up very well. I would buy from them again.

Stanley Green Kitchens

Well, that’s what the internet tells me they’re called. TBH, I don’t remember. Anyway, the kitchen was very well made – a damn site sturdier than the B&Q job that’s in our current house.

Ikea

Units made from good thick chipboard (thicker than most other places), so very sturdy. Base cabinets are deeper than a lot of others, so you may find running services behind them difficult. I re-routed mine so the services run underneath the cabinets, so I can still access them (just!) if I even need to without removing cabinets

Ikea cabinets have full depth inside, so you cant hide services at the back. You have to run them inside or underneath the cupboard or in the wall.
If thats an issue then you need to plan for it or go with a “false” back design.

Units n doors n tap, Howdens
Appliances and sink, John Lewis
Worktop, ‘Spain’ – mate of fitter imported some stuff which is going in today that we are saving heaps on over John Lewis.

Ikea.

It’s the units in the second of Stones photos. Fitted it myself and it was a doddle.

Oak worktops are teh bizness.

B&Q, fitted it myself 3 1/2 years ago and it’s been great.

Got the appliances from different sources and the sink off a mate, but other than that all from there.

B&Q and Howdens are the same carcases and doors etc

We got a Howdens kitchen 3 years ago, very pleased so far. Howdens were expensive for taps and appliances, even their ‘package deals’

Magnet were just silly money for nothing special.

+1 for Ikea. Didn’t anticipate the full-depth thing and had to get a gas pipe moved, but other than that, great.

IKEA (sorry but there is a huge one down the road)

Simple to fit/organise, wasn’t bothered about the cost so much as quality of stuff. Masses of options and I’m very pleased with it.

Shameless plug for my friend’s new venture for anyone in or around Glasgow

http://www.decourcyskitchenco.com/

We have just built our house and my wife had decided she had to have a Mark Wilkinson kitchen.
Now its very nice but was silly expensive and not a lot better than the Ikea units that went in the utility.

Wickes To-Order at 50% off, plus an extra 15% off cabinets.

Yes, I’m impressed with product but that’s the easy part.

Customer service was good also. Sometimes there are problems and it’s how a supplier handles those problems. We had a dodgy kitchen stylist who ordered the wrong worktop and didn’t suggest we have end-panels to the exposed sides of the cupboards.

First off, we sent the wrong worktop back on day of delivery and had the replacement delivered the next day by specialist courier. Then, on first day of installation we noted that there should be glossy end panels for the exposed sides of the cupboards, so conatcted Wickes and they sent the end panels next day also, and didn’t even charge us for the end panels themselves which should have been an extra. They must have spent a fortune on specialist next day couriers.

The worktop was dealt with by the store, the end panels by the head office as store manager wasn’t in that day. The head office had no qualms about resolving the issue, so I’d say there is a policy of customer service at Wickes rather than just at individual store level.

Because of their prompt responses, we never incurred a re-visit from the kitchen fitter.

Sounds like I’m singing their praises but I’m not. They did exactly what they should in the situation. I’m sure there are some horror stories out there with kitchen suppliers. Probably Wickes included.

There’s always an offer on somewhere with these sort of things, so never pay full price.

Shop around for sinks and taps online, we found the same sink and tap that Wickes were selling for about £100 less per item. They draw you in with the offers on cabinets and then sting you on the accessories because most people will go the easy option of a one stop shop.

wickes +1

fitted a wickes kitchen in my old house and lived with it for 4 years before we moved.

didn’t use their fitters, but the carcasses were noticeable more robust than others we looked at (b&q, homebase, ikea)… rumour was that they were howdens rebadged. doors and handles also nicely finished and the soft closers were excellent and durable.

carcasses and doors looked as good as new when we moved out (4 years later).

solid oak worktop we bought off ebay. ikea worktops came highly recommended, but we needed a 4m length, but ikea could only do 3m max.

fitted it all myself except gas plumbing and worktop fitting (done by a guy from the Mr Mitre franchise – highly recommended, but bear in mind your local bloke will be different from mine).

Dave

Ikea – great value for money and easy to assemble and fit

I made a fake business card & opened a trade account at B&Q. Good savings to be had.

We bought ours from a local independant showroom that had what we wanted at a good price and looked competent.
We handed over a deposit and a motorbike of mine that the owner agreed to buy and waited. And waited. And waited.
It was only when I went in while the owner was out and mentioned what had (hadn’t) happened to his wife who worked part time there that we finally got our kitchen, and the motorbike back as that hadn’t been fully paid for.
By that time we had been washing up in the bath for two months since we’d ripped the old kitchen out in preparation.
A couple of months later we found out that the owner had been taking full payment in advance from customers at circa £10k a time and moved to Spain with that money and his girlfriend, leaving his wife and kids to fend off the bailifs and irate customers.

Buy a ‘kitchen’? I seem to be in the minority of hippy bohemian kitchen creators. This was in my last house, but I’ve never subscribed to the world of the flat pack.

Ours came from http://kitchenfactory-birmingham.co.uk/ via a local worktop supplier Toprock, much much cheaper and better quality than the comparable from Howden or Magnet (our builders had kitchen from both in new builds that we were able to inspect). Very good, no issue with it over the last year, though if/when buying again I think we’d look at maybe a soft (blue) colour for the unit rather than the cream we got (or white). As you only need to look at it with dirty hands to get muck everywhere 😳