Is our kitchen budget too small?

kirstypea

We have a budget of £10,000 for a 15x9 foot kitchen, from scratch. This includes flooring, wall tiles, sink, worktop, cabinets, all appliances (OH wants an american fridge-freezer & range style cooker plus washing machine & dishwasher), skimming the artex ceiling, and all fitting, plumbing, electrics gas etc. We'd also need the existing kitchen removed I expect. We've always been in rented accommodation so we've never fitted a kitchen before & have no idea how to go about it! Is this budget realistic?

We went to Ikea yesterday which seemed to be within our budget but the design section was just a bunch of unattended computers with the 3d application on. We'd really like someone to design the kitchen for us, but do kitchen designers deal with such a small budget? The pictures on the websites I've looked at look very high-end.

Louby-Lou_2

go to b & q to get a plan and go from there that what we did.

wallbash

I think your budget is huge.

Did a larger kitchen for less than £6000,
But It was in the days of MFI, over four years old and still looking very good.

but do kitchen designers deal with such a small

If the ones you choose , don't !! walk away .

becs

Hi Our's was 15'6" x 9' kitchen. We removed the old kitchen ourselves and fitted the kitchen ourselves (Ikea kitchen) we bought mid range built in appliances double oven, Microwave/grill, 70cm ceramic hob, dishwasher and then big freestanding fridge freezer. We had Bamboo wood flooring laid and had tiles from fired earth at 75m2 for the splashback fitted. We also had new sockets installed and wiring for cooker moved etc. We spent just over £4k, Ikea's fitting service was going to be appx £1000 for our kitchen and have heard good reports but we did it ourselve. If you have the time and patience it's not that hard to do. I would say £10k is a good budget. Did you know you can download the IKEA kitchen planner at home and have a play around? I did our kitchen and am really pleased with the design. I think designers can produce some brilliant designs but they aren't always what works best for you, only you would know that by living in the space and seeing how you normally use it.

kirstypea

I did mess around with the ikea planner for a while, but found it quite frustrating when I had gaps and odd spaces left over.

I wish we didnt have to go to ikea, homebase, b&q etc cos I'd really like to have something a bit different. I'm guessing unusual = expensive though!

becs

It does take a bot of getting used to the Ikea planning tool. The drawer units at the front of our kitchen caused me no nd of grief because of gaps. In the end I had to just rethink unit sizes,.I had 80cm ones stuck in my head forgetting about all the other options. You have to really just work out your length and try and jiggle different sizes in to get the right fit. The wall with our tall units on has a gap of a few cm at the end which we needed so the larder door would go accross the architrave. We do intend filling it by cutting an end panel down to size but I have to say I don't even notice it. The same on the front units, there is a gap of appx 8cm which we will fill in with an end cover panel cut to size.

cally1_2

Wickes were very helpful with their design service and no high pressure sales patter either. I went back several times to revisit my design and change it.

27col

Nice job becs.
Generally I would say design your own kitchen, it is not rocket science. Only you know what you want. When we had someone from one of the sheds years ago. We ended up ignoring most of their ideas and substituting our own. Their plan seemed to be based mainly on selling as many cabinets as they could. Regardless of whether this provided what we actually wanted.

Bean_Counter

I think the budget will be fine.

When we changed our kitchen last year, we had some companies come out, measure up and quoted for the work. They also came up with some interesting ideas that we hadn't thought of.

The one we went with in the end measured up, input the data into his laptop in minutes and had 3D images of the proposed design very quickly. We could then chop and change what we wanted and see the effect from different angles. Very impressive really.

Brodiebobs

we were abit cheeky and got B+Q to design ours then took the plan to a few joiners outta yellow pages and asked how much they'd build it for. For a bog standard quite cheap looking one B+Q there was over 2k plus fitting!, but our joiner made and fitted oak units and ganite worktops for £1400. Then we just bought appliances from local retailer who was much cheaper than the likes of curry's etc, and even give us a discount for multiple purchases!!!

lisal0u

Hiya,

I think your budget is pretty good too!

We bought ours recently from Ikea:





We designed it ourselves too and it cost just under £3000 (the worktops bumped up the price quite a lot!) That included the hob and sink. The tap, oven and microwave came to about £800 I think.

We got a joiner in to fit it which cost £600 and laid the flooring ourselves. The flooring is engineered oak and cost £26/m2. The hob cost £50 to install.

Good luck getting the kitchen of your dreams!