Cooke & Lewis kitchens at B & Q

TomsMom wrote: »

I was in B & Q recently and picked up the Cooke & Lewis brochure. I may be cynical but is it B & Q trying to [strike]con[/strike] persuade us that these are special by using a "designer-y" type name??? Is it just their old Select kitchens with a new name???

I think you need to ask someone at B&Q about the differences. Most of the old "Select" kitchens are now in the Cooke & Lewis brochure. Looking at the brochure the whole "Cooke & Lewis" seems to be a figment of some marketing guy's imagination - but perhaps they are a supplier of B&Q.

I noticed the Lugano kitchen at my local B&Q (one of the old "Select" kitchens) had stickers on saying the cabinets had now been "upgraded" and to ask staff - but I couldn't see anyone to ask. I had a nose around one of the new displays in gloss white and the drawer boxes and cabinet construction seemed identical to my own "Select" kitchen.

One difference seems to be they are now offering a white version of the carcass - they were all wood (Oak, Ash or Birch) before. They have also added "curved" doors which weren't available before.

I personally bought a "Select" kitchen (Portchester - now discontinued but was very cheap) a few months ago, and have just had it installed by my own kitchen fitter.

Good:

• The cabinets are nice and thick 18mm - as are the doors 22mm - it all feels very sturdy
• The wall units are spacious
• The price for our kitchen was very good (£20/door plus 15% off everything during an offer)
• Nice quality overall
• Quality Salice hinges and buffers
• Quality stainless steel drawer boxes with soft close
• Very little to do to actually assemble them - most of the pegs / cams / etc are pre-fitted, the drawboxes just need the fronts attaching, etc
• Nice shelves
• Good service gap at the back of the cabinets for pipes etc
• Strong door boxes and cabinet backs

The bad:

• It didn't all arrive on the day. So after waiting 6 weeks I had to wait a further 6 weeks for some of the end panels and doors.
• B&Q ship by a combination of their own fleet and Parcelforce / NightFreight. Everything their own fleet shipped (the bulk of the kitchen arrived on one pallet) arrived in fine condition. Every single thing shipped by Nightfreight / Parcelforce was damaged - bashed corners on doors, a chipped base unit, etc. It seems to me their packaging isn't good enough to go via a standard courier. Their own fleet are clearly more careful (knowing the limitations of the packaging)
• The tall oven housing doesn't actually come with enough bits to hold an oven and a microwave (he had to make a shelf up)
• The finish of the Portchester was variable - I think they discontinued it due to quality control issues. For example the cornice is very slightly different colour to the doors. And of course due to the delays in getting all of it, there may be batch variations. The overall look was great though - but not up to "German" kitchen quality levels (Alno etc) - also not that kind of price though!
• half of the bases in the drawer boxes were slighly offset, making the drawer fronts sit at funny angles. Easy enough to fix (a couple of screws allow you to slacken off the drawer bottom and re-position it) but annoying.
• Seem expensive looking through their catalog unless you get an offer

The net effect though is we did get a great looking kitchen (in our case for a great price). Certainly better than Howdens / MFI standard / B&Q standard / homebase / wickes run-of-the-mill kitchen ranges.

I would recommend the old "Select" and what seems to be the new Cooke&Lewis kitchens - if you get it while there is a good offer on.

I hate it when you type out a really long answer and then lose it :mad:

It is a rebranding although the carcasses are indeed different. We had a quote on Friday and I was really impressed with the result. We decided to throw everything we wanted in and then compromise depending on the cost. We were offered a 15% discount (we want to hold out for a 20%) but even without the discount it was coming in just under our budget.

I'm liking the details that usually come on more expensive kitchens, the carcasses are average but it's nice that everything on show is really neat and tidy!

It was a cheaper than MFI even when we'd already started haggling with them a little while back. Haven't looked at their Kutchen Lab range yet though but I'm in love with the cream gloss and aubergine accent from B&Q.