Kitchen suppliers - your experiences.

Tallu

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CKdesigner

Hi Tallu

To be honest unless your kitchen amounts to 3 or 4 base units and maybe 1 or 2 wall units then £1000 is not enough for a new kitchen. If your kitchen is bigger than this then if I were you I would be looking at 2nd hand websites and ebay.

Good luck with your search

CK

phill99

Normally, I agree whole heartedly with CK, but this time beg to differ slightly.

It depends how big your kitchen is and what appliances you need for £1k.

Howdens at the moment are doing 11 carcasses including doors in their Greenwich white or Greenwich Oak range for £399+ vat there are restrictins ie one has to be a 500mm drawer pack, one has to be an oven housing unit. It doesn't include tower units or L shaped corners. But if you are fairly flexible, it could be a good start. They also offer a basic oven hob and extractor pack for £180 + vat.

In response to your question, it's better to get the doors and carcasses from the same supplier as hinge hole locations may vary slightly. But you can get worktops and up stands elsewhere (if you are on a budget, drop the upstanding idea - they become an expensive luxury).

Where in the country are you as someone may be able to recommend somewhere.

1trainer1

sorry to hijack this thread but we are in the process of purchasing a kitchen and Howdens came in at just over £4000 but then said they could do a 20% discount ie knocking the VAT off (which I thought was expensive).

have you got a link to the kitchen for £399 plus VAT as it would be something we could look into

phill99

1trainer1 wrote: »

sorry to hijack this thread but we are in the process of purchasing a kitchen and Howdens came in at just over £4000 but then said they could do a 20% discount ie knocking the VAT off (which I thought was expensive).

have you got a link to the kitchen for £399 plus VAT as it would be something we could look into

Unfortunately I don't have a link. It seems to be an in store offer.

In terms of getting a decent price from Howdens you need to get a tradesman to front it for you.

ryder72

phil99 - I would love to see what they are offering for £399. Thats £36 for a carcase and a door/drawer front. I cant see how this it is possible even for the cheapest quality carcase and door.

Perhaps its one of these offers where its available only if you buy a minimum quantity of plinths (at £200 a length) and handles (at £20 each) from them?

phill99

ryder72 wrote: »

phil99 - I would love to see what they are offering for £399. Thats £36 for a carcase and a door/drawer front. I cant see how this it is possible even for the cheapest quality carcase and door.

Perhaps its one of these offers where its available only if you buy a minimum quantity of plinths (at £200 a length) and handles (at £20 each) from them?

I go in to Howdens quite a lot and discussed it with the manager on Friday.

There are no catches. You don't have to buy anything else. But it is only limited sized units - no larders, tall oven housings etc.

You don't have to buy anything else.

There reckoning is to use it as a loss leader and then people will want decor ends, sink eye where they will make their money. But you don't have to buy anything else to get the deal.

Bear in mind that Howdens business model is different from retail kitchen sellers as they work in shifting large volumes with low margins on each. And as it's a trade only place, they want their trade customers to keep going back for more, so it's about relationship marketing.

A1P

phill99 wrote: »

Unfortunately I don't have a link. It seems to be an in store offer.

In terms of getting a decent price from Howdens you need to get a tradesman to front it for you.

The £399 'Landlords Special' kitchen is offered periodically to tradesmen.I can't comment on the quality but from memory the carcases were similar to the usual units and I think they may have been rigid built.It is restricted in what you can have as pointed out in an earlier post.It is the quality of the doors that impact on unit costs.The doors will be at the bottom end of the market.

As regards appliances avoid CDA which is offered by many kitchen companies.According to many review sites the quality is allegedly dreadful and attempting to get any follow up 'customer service' is another experience to be avoided.

1trainer1

phill99 wrote: »

Normally, I agree whole heartedly with CK, but this time beg to differ slightly.

It depends how big your kitchen is and what appliances you need for £1k.

Howdens at the moment are doing 11 carcasses including doors in their Greenwich white or Greenwich Oak range for £399+ vat there are restrictins ie one has to be a 500mm drawer pack, one has to be an oven housing unit. It doesn't include tower units or L shaped corners. But if you are fairly flexible, it could be a good start. They also offer a basic oven hob and extractor pack for £180 + vat.

In response to your question, it's better to get the doors and carcasses from the same supplier as hinge hole locations may vary slightly. But you can get worktops and up stands elsewhere (if you are on a budget, drop the upstanding idea - they become an expensive luxury).

Where in the country are you as someone may be able to recommend somewhere.

phill99 wrote: »

Unfortunately I don't have a link. It seems to be an in store offer.

In terms of getting a decent price from Howdens you need to get a tradesman to front it for you.

Thanks, I will speak to my builder and see what sort of price he can get with our design

penguingirl

We bought mix and match (and I have posted about it on here several times). We bought carcasses and doors from DIY kitchens- think we spent about £1400 for quite a lot including corner cupboards and drawers (cupboards are much cheaper than drawers!). Worktops came from local timber yard, handles came from ironmongers we found online that turned out to be near somewhere I visit regularly (so we saved p&p). Accessories such as splashback, hood, extractor fan, plug sockets, lights etc were all sourced from wherever we could find them cheapest. We literally just made a spreadsheet with everything we needed for the kitchen and links to where we buying from.

cddc

phill99 wrote: »

Normally, I agree whole heartedly with CK, but this time beg to differ slightly.

It depends how big your kitchen is and what appliances you need for £1k.

Howdens at the moment are doing 11 carcasses including doors in their Greenwich white or Greenwich Oak range for £399+ vat there are restrictins ie one has to be a 500mm drawer pack, one has to be an oven housing unit. It doesn't include tower units or L shaped corners. But if you are fairly flexible, it could be a good start. They also offer a basic oven hob and extractor pack for £180 + vat.

In response to your question, it's better to get the doors and carcasses from the same supplier as hinge hole locations may vary slightly. But you can get worktops and up stands elsewhere (if you are on a budget, drop the upstanding idea - they become an expensive luxury).

Where in the country are you as someone may be able to recommend somewhere.

Now that is a blinding deal, though the Greenwich door is a cheap one and looks it.

I would say avoid cheap Howdens Lamona appliances though.
Lucky if you get more than a year out of them.