Kitchen renovation advice.

Stace255

Hi all

We are about.to start the process of renovating the kitchen in our Victorian terrace. Everything need ripping out and starting again.

Kitchen is 3.5m by 2.54m 

We are planning on staying in the house for another 3/4 years so don't want to go high end but still want it to look good when we sell, so don't want to go for the cheapest option.

We have no idea where to start in terms of process and suppliers or likely cost. I have £10k in my head but that figure is pulled out of thin air. 

We can rip the old kitchen out ourselves (swift kick should deal with most of it!) but would need the new one to be fitted professionally.

We will need new flooring and would want intergrated appliances.

Any tips or recommendations of companies greatly recieved.

zenshi

When I did mine, first thing was to go to the DIY stores etc and get a free plan and design. They will quote for most expensive of their products which you can Tweak it as much as you like. Some things I bought online myself for much less.I found them to be very expensive for fitting! 

Find a good independent fitter and you’ll save loads. Mine was 5 years ago and obv prices have gone up but to give you an idea, one quote was £18k (£8k was fitting). Price I paid £8k (£2k for fitting)

Albermarle

If you type 'Kitchen' in the search box at the top of the page, you will see various threads on a similar theme, so worth reading through them. 

Green_hopeful

DIY kitchens are a good starting place. https://www.diy-kitchens.com/ They are relatively fixed price so you don’t have all the nonsense of trying to haggle with the big companies. You can try gettIng some plans drawn up with the DIY stores eg Wickes but don’t get drawn into going with them. If you know what you want you could use the DIY Kitchens planner. We found a fitter on Facebook who had worked with our electrician but we also found a fitter who had been fitting for Howdens and he has done more for us. The good thing about DIY kitchens is the units come ready built so there is much less for the fitter to do. 

FreeBear

Stace255 said: Any tips or recommendations of companies greatly recieved.

Personally, I can't recommend any particular company, but I can name a few to avoid...

Magnet - Overpriced, and will ignore instruction not to spam email accounts when sending out quotes.

Howdens - Prices are variable depending on the whim of the salesman.

Wren - Never really see a positive review on any forum, and aftersales support appears to leave much to be desired. Also indulges in high pressure sales tactics - e.g. Sign here and now for extra "discounts".

I'd recommend contacting a couple of local independent kitchen/bathroom companies - When I was looking, a local company was undercutting the likes of Magnet without any of the BS.

If you are completely gutting the kitchen, do give some consideration to insulating the walls & floor. Whilst it won't reduce the heat loss by a huge amount, condensation on the walls will be reduced. And do make sure that you have a decent cooker hood extracting to the outside.

gwynlas

If you are happy with current layout it will be more straightforward in replacing like for like.

I have had two wren kitchens fitted without any problems.

I would suggest you have as many deep pan drawers as possible as they save you bending to get at the back of cupboards. One of mine houses crockery and glassware. another pyrex etc.

Green_hopeful

Yes we like drawers over cupboards. We have a mix but the drawers are easier to use. 

FreeBear

gwynlas said: I would suggest you have as many deep pan drawers as possible as they save you bending to get at the back of cupboards. One of mine houses crockery and glassware. another pyrex etc.

I keep all my go-to stuff in drawers - Have a 900mm wide pan drawer set, and 5 drawers in the other base units.

Corner units are good for hiding the big & bulky tat'n'crap that you never want to see again.

Cupboards less than 400mm wide are not big enough to do much with - Had a couple of 300mm units in my old kitchen, and they only ever got used for storing junk in. The new kitchen was designed around 600mm wide base units (plus the 900mm pan drawer), and I used a 150mm bottle rack as a space filler. Handy for storing rolls of clingfilm & aluminium foil.

cpbackhouse

I fitted our kitchen from DIY kitchens. 
I found the planner tool (might be different now) really good and allowed me to try out many different options. They also seemed to have the widest range of shapes and sizes of the more affordable suppliers. 

There were a couple of things missing from our order but they were sorted very quickly and efficiently. I always say you can only really judge a company when things go wrong and I couldn't fault their customer service. 

Maybe a DIY kitchen in conjunction with an independent fitter?

casper_gutman

We had ours from DIY kitchens, and fitted by an independent fitter (through the builders who did our extension). I agree with recommendations for DIY kitchens. There were a couple of bits missing from our order, which the delivery team actually pointed out, and the extra bits arrived the following day. The prices and quality were excellent, and the fitters were impressed. It looks great now, three years in. Another good thing about DIY kitchens is the large range of unit widths, as well as reduced depth units and wall/tall units in a choice of heights.

There are downsides to using a supplier like DIY that doesn't have local stores/depots though. Don't underestimate how much space will be needed to store things when they arrive. If there had been missing items that were only discovered during fitting, the installers could have popped to a local Wickes/Howden's/whatever to pick something up, but this wouldn't have been an option with DIY. I'd recommend checking the delivery very carefully against your order, and scheduling it to come at least a few days before fitting (though this does mean the boxes will take over the house for a bit!). 

ruby_eskimo

Another shout out for DIY Kitchens - we actually went to Wren to get all the measurements done and a plan, and then replicated it in the DIY Kitchens planner.  They now have 2 showrooms (original one near Doncaster, new one near Oxford) and would recommend actually going and seeing what they're like.  It helped us get a better feel for some of the units and gave us ideas on how to get exactly what we wanted e.g. most people said if we wanted a vented hob, we had to get it fitted over the top of a cupboard unit but in the showrooms they had them fitted over pan drawers.  Has worked out really well for us as we can keep baking trays in that drawer which reduces the risk of DH smoking out the kitchen when he pre-heats the oven and accidentally has left an old baking tray in there.  You can also order samples from them to check colours of units and they offer worktops with installation from a partner company, but we went with a local supplier in the end for that.  You can buy appliances from them but again we just found it easier to order ourselves, but they do have units for integrated appliances which you can specify on their planning tool.

We had ours fitted through the builders we'd used for our bathroom renovation, and they said they love fitting DIY Kitchens because it's quite easy.  Plus the flapjacks they send out are amazing 😋

When it comes to cost, don't forget you aren't just paying for the kitchen and fitting.  You might need electrics brought up to code, floors might need levelling, walls might need re-plastering where you've taken units down etc.