Our kitchen is made up a combination of a 1950s wall unit (fitted), and cheap B&Q value style cabinets aging from the mid 80's to late 90's. We are having new windows fitted in the kitchen soon so once they are done it is the right time to put a new kitchen in.
It is now really tired and I want to rip the lot out, have been looking at B&Q, Selco and Wickes. Anybody got any experience of this? I think we need 6 double units, 3 double wall units and maybe a 300mm unit some where. I have not done the planning yet. Probably need about 5m of worktop.
Budget is around £500-£600 is it possible? That will include some making good of the ceiling, possibly some skimming behind the old 1950s unit, a new laminated floor, new sink unit, taps but we will be keeping all the existing appliances. It will be nothing fancy, just something that looks smarter than it does now.
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>> Budget is around £500-£600 is it possible? That will include some making good of the
>> ceiling, possibly some skimming behind the old 1950s unit, a new laminated floor, new sink
>> unit, taps but we will be keeping all the existing appliances. It will be nothing
>> fancy, just something that looks smarter than it does now.
>>
I think you'll struggle to get the jobs listed in your post completed for £600, let alone a new kitchen and worktop. :-(
IKEA kitchens aren't the cheapest, but they're not bad. My brother bought his kitchen from IKEA and fitted it himself and it looks good.
Last edited by: Fursty Ferret on Wed 17 Jul 13 at 10:57
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I will be doing all the work myself, so there will be no labour it is all materials. The skimming will cost nothing, the floor maybe quite a bit not budgeted for that yet, £600 is just materials only. The units will be about £350, the worktop maybe £150 but it is all the little things that add up which I always seem to forget. Have seen a sink unit in Wickes for £90 which includes the taps which seems good value etc.
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>>
>> IKEA kitchens aren't the cheapest, but they're not bad. My brother bought his kitchen from
>> IKEA and fitted it himself and it looks good.
>>
Another vote for IKEA. Mine is now 7 years old and still looks good and nothing has dropped off or broken !
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My kitchen is also from IKEA and is wearing well.
Most of the finished look will depend on the care you put into the planning and construction.
Another benefit of IKEA is that their FACTUM range has been sold for many years and will probably be for many more. Some parts of my kitchen were built years before others and still match perfectly.
Last edited by: Crocks on Wed 17 Jul 13 at 12:25
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>> My kitchen is also from IKEA and is wearing well.
>>
>> Most of the finished look will depend on the care you put into the planning
>> and construction.
>>
>> Another benefit of IKEA is that their FACTUM range has been sold for many years
>> and will probably be for many more. Some parts of my kitchen were built years
>> before others and still match perfectly.
>>
I ordered some Ikea kitchen cupboards for my daughters flat.
I needed their tallest cupboards and then some shallow cupboards to go on top.
Ikea have a large range of doors priced from very very cheap cost so at a later stage a cosmetic upgrade is simple.
Also in the same order were several Billy bookcases and other bits.
IIRC £35 for the whole lot to be delivered. A bargain! IKEA stuff is quite heavy !
A couple of sub contractors turned up in a Luton top.
Not happy bunnies when told third floor and no lift.
I gave the sweaty lads a tip to get a drink.
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I did my kitchen with wickes. Its essentially flat pack, but decent quality. Care in construction (sealing the edges is key) will ensure very long life. The units are cheap. The money is in the doors! I have solid wood doors, and they are never in the sale or special offers! only the units.
6 metres of work top, 20 various units, sink, taps, and appliances cost me 5 grand. Tiles (floor and wall) another 500.
YOu need to do the planning before you can guestimate the cost.
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Done this many times and always achieved a very good result for modest cost.
As Zero says you need to plan the kitchen out. Then look round every supplier. My personal opinion is that on a budget pretty well every makers carcass will be fine. The crucial bit is taking care with levelling, fixing and as Zero says sealing. Water can quickly evaporate chipboard.
If the doors go up in price in say 10 steps often one off the bottom will be ok.
As long as it is the correct thickness the cheapest worktop will last fine. Sinks and particularly taps can be very expensive. I bought our designer £200+ sink for the utility room on Ebay locally for £35. With all wastes and never been fitted.
Thank goodness this place with the largest kitchen we've had so far was refitted not too long ago in a style we'd have happily chosen and with more expensive units than I'd have bought.
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Have a word with your window man....he knows where to buy from. Helped him with his kitchen last year. Got it from some trade place. I forget the name but he'll know.
Ted
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>>The crucial bit is taking care with levelling, fixing and as Zero says sealing.
>> Water can quickly evaporate chipboard.
>>
I describe the after effect of water getting into chipboard as the Wheetabix effect.
I try to seal the bottom edges of cabinets that are in touch with the floor
I would look very very carefully at the quality of some chipboard type work tops.
Our worktops had just a small amount of the top surface wrapped over and under the front edge. The worktops now have the Wheetabix effect between the front edge and the cabinets.
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I agree that as long as they are well fitted basic units from ikea or Wickes will be fine. I would always spend my money on decent quality worktops and flooring. They are what wear. Don't skimp on the taps either. Cheap taps are a false economy.
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>>>Cheap taps are a false economy.
Fair enough if you are doing a £4k+ job but a "decent" sink and mixer tap would blow Rattle's budget for the whole job.
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Buy these items second hand. Decent taps will last forever - cheap taps will be an ongoing source of irritation and you end up replacing them.
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Our poncy non-white mixer tap cost a click over £250 and broke within it's first year. The operating handle snapped off. No problem with B & Q, but I opted for a cheaper stainless steel one. I think the broken one was made of resin. Also, the braided ' tails ' turned with the body of the tap. They had a certain amount of memory so the nozzle never stayed where you aimed it.
The resin double sink ( equally poncy ) also has a design fault....the grooves on the drainer are not numerous or deep enough to drain cups/glasses properly. £450 !!
That's Rat's budget on two items.
Get something simple and proven.
Ted
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Doesn't need to be anything fancy. I paid £70 for the sink and taps in the bathroom, taps cost £40 from Lidl, around 6 years later the taps are still functioning perfectly.
Current taps in the kitchen are from Wickes, are 12 years old, look a right mess now but they still work perfectly, so may just buy a similar pair from Wickes, I guess they would be about £60 now.
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A friend of mine worked for MFI for 18 years. She rates Wickes, unless you want something fancy.
We need a kitchen. Need to get down to sorting it out. Planning to check out Wickes and IKEA.
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£600 would not buy the magic corner 'hinging out' unit in my German kitchen!
Amongst my builder friends best buy is rated as IKEA or Howdens. Howdens need to be bought on a trade account to be worthwhile. IKEA used to have a problem in that they were flat backed, no space for services on the wall. I am not sure if that is still true.
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Agree Rattle. To go with my lucky buy £35 Ebay sink for the utility room I bought cheap pillar taps from Screwfix. Currently on offer at £15-99/pr in the Victorian style.
Nice and conventional with good flow (no tiny bore pipes and passageways like some expensive mixers).
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>>>they were flat backed, no space for services on the wall
If still true I'd steer clear... Rattle's house is old too so wobbly walls standard.
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I got end of line Franke sink and taps off the web, for 135 quid. You need to be pretty flexible about style and colour to get stuff like that, but if you are it pays dividends.
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We fitted attractive but cheap units and worktops in the last place we sold however sink and taps were Franke on some sort of deal and also a custom fitted Bosch dishwasher. Added some budget but attractive tiles put up by a friend.
Small budget & job sorted nicely.
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At one time the Franke quality was legendary and good! Not so sure now, I have seen poor quality Franke taps and the ss sinks are no longer thick material.
The Franke 1.5 sink that I have in the garage is so heavily built that you can drop heavyweight items in it and it does not take dinks! Cost £3.50 with taps and wastes and worktop just needed cutting to length. Courtesy of the local tip!
Last edited by: pmh on Wed 17 Jul 13 at 18:09
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>> >>>they were flat backed, no space for services on the wall
>>
>> If still true I'd steer clear... Rattle's house is old too so wobbly walls standard.
>>
Flat backed should not be a problem as they are base units.
My units are not flat backed and the waste of storage space annoys me.
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>> Flat backed should not be a problem as they are base units.
>> My units are not flat backed and the waste of storage space annoys me.
Flat back base units are a problem. Ones with space behind are essential for ease of services and fitting against old non straight walls.
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>>
>> >> Flat backed should not be a problem as they are base units.
>> >> My units are not flat backed and the waste of storage space annoys me.
>>
>>
>> Flat back base units are a problem. Ones with space behind are essential for ease
>> of services and fitting against old non straight walls.
>>
Also if you space them off the wall you may find that you need a deeper work top at a less competitive price and fewer options?
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It was Howdens where my SiL got his kitchen from. His house is probably 1880ish and it was fairly easy to fit them with the space for services.
Have a look on Selco's website as well. They do kitchens, sinks, taps and plumbing as well as everything you'll need for the job. You'll need a trade card but you can borrow mine. There's a branch in Baguley.
Ted
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Thanks I have a Selco card been very useful, there is one next to my soon to be old office in Ardwick, bought a lot of wood for the furniture I built from there, landlords going to be donate it all to a charity.
I have Selco very cheap for building stuff, but you really have to watch the price of other things. I found electrical fittings to actually be far cheaper in B&Q but they were doing some sort of promotion at the time for basics like sockets and light switches.
It still won't be a properly fitted kitchen, for it to be a very good job things ideally need moving, it would need to be taken back to bricks, boiler replaced, door moved etc, which would run into many £1000s so it is just a matter of replacing old units with new but keeping the same layout.
Just want to do the kitchen while I am still self employed because once I get a job I won't have the same time for these such projects.
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Buy second hand. Huge savings to be had.
When I moved into my current place it was less than 12 months old. I advertised the worktop , units etc and they were gone in 48 hours including the horrible green appliances. I did the same after another 6 years when I knocked through one way and built an extension the other creating a long galley kitchen.
Two friends of mine have recently sold 6/8yo perfectly good, modern kitchen units,good quality carcasses, with appliances on Pre Loved/Ebay. Again, they were gone in 48 hours giving them both a blank canvas to start again, which they did, via the same means.
Once you checked your calculations, drawn up an accurate floorplan on some graph paper, source from these sites then hire a van for a day. Tiles will have to be new!
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It all depends on what quality you want....and how much disruption you want to put up with.
At our last place we used Magnet - not a success as around 80% of the bits arrived and the balance was up to three months later.... I was not happy
SWMBO and I decided to look at updating our current kitchen which is in oak.She went to a local all singing and dancing place where they come and sit with you in the kitchen and chat for hours about what you want .......
We then went to the shop where they had a fantastic computer aided design programme which could give views of the finished item........and chatted for further hours...
I would have happily paid £10 ,000 or maybe even £15 k at a push......but the quote came in at somewhere north of £17 K and that was without any lighting and replacing flooring work which would have been needed or the marble worktops she wanted , add that in and it was getting near to £25 K. ......so that was kicked into touch , particularly when SWMBO realised that even after all the discussions she would have less worktop space than we have with the current design.....
We then looked at just replacing doors.....and even that came it at over £8 K. I am sure I could get it cheaper by going to somewhere like Wickes / Howden / B&Q / Homebase but we have left it for the moment.
The first lot were talking about replacing perfectly good items such as our Franke double stainless sink with one somewhere above £500 ( without the taps)........
Looks like we may have to use my expertise to buy the bits and then use my nephew who is a builder at ' family ' rates but he is so busy that it will take months to get him and his team in ....
.....so it is now next years post retirement project.
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The chipboard boxes are much of a muchness. I've fitted Wickes and B&Q in my time.
The money is indeed in the doors. Contemplate second hand solid wood ones off eBay. Buy the doors first and then fit kitchen around the doors. Beware Ikea, Wickes and B&Q all have different-sized units and doors. They won't mix-and-match.
More expense in door handles. You could spend £600 on them if you try.
No need to skim behind the unit if there will be new units going in over it.
I'd put down vinyl flooring (lino type), not laminate. Water gets between the joints in the laminate and it lifts up. You *will* flood the kitchen floor at some point.
B&Q value white worktops, and then replace them in five years' time.
You can get some nearly new second hand premium kitchens on eBay quite cheaply.
Last edited by: Mapmaker on Thu 18 Jul 13 at 10:02
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IKEA are phasing out the Faktum range this year, although they will continue to support warranty etc.
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Just been to Selco, looking at some of their cheaper stuff, the quality seems ok and they come with a five year warranty, but anything has to be better than the cheap B&Q value units we currently have.
They do a mixer tap for £35 plus VAT which comes with a ten year warranty, so that should do the job.
Great suggestion about the cushion floor too, will be quite a bit cheaper and while old fashioned it will do the job. This isn't supposed to be a fancy kitchen or anything like that.
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I hoping to start this job quite soon. The existing sink unit is 14 years old but is still perfectly fine, so we are planning on saving £50 by reusing it. We will need new basic taps but these are always on offer, I fitted cheap basic Lidl taps in the bathroom seven years ago and they still work perfectly.
If a cheap tap fails after five years it is not a massive job to change them.
There is some going to be some tricky bits cutting a worktop to shape round a diagonal bend but will make a template first to ensure that when I cut the worktop it is the right size.
Cushion floor is the only option for the floor due to budget.
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If you are on a tight budget, check ebay for used kitchens.
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I did our third floor kitchen in the Grove using plastic-surfaced (very strong and resistant) worktop, a steel sink unit sunk into that and some very expensive and beautiful grey, pink and white marble tiles as backing. You have to manage something sort of elegant and reasonably tight and waterproof at joins in the worktop and its ends. It was very hard work and took ages, with long pauses for thought and trips to the hardware places (good ones in the Grove in my day) for this and that.
Couldn't (wouldn't try even) do it now to save my life. Earlier today a very nice geezer delivered a new bed for the oldest grandnipper upstairs here. He took all the parts up and assembled the bed, but the very heavy and stiff double mattress had to be dragged up our small, tortuous staircase. Just helping the bloke do it near enough killed me, and I'm still suffering from sight disturbances three hours later. Some years ago though I remember getting a similar mattress up the same staircase on my own.
Last edited by: VxFan on Mon 19 May 14 at 02:19
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- - Just helping the bloke do it near enough killed me, and I'm still suffering from sight disturbances three hours later
= = > www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25680933
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Thank you Perro for that comprehensive run-down on the winter mortality hump.
But I'm still alive I think as of now, and the sight disturbances have stopped. So far so good comrade, so far so good.
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Jack LaLanne was still pumping iron in his 90's Sire, his motto was "if man makes it, don't eat it, and, if it tastes good, spit it out".
www.imdb.com/name/nm0482364/
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>> still pumping iron in his 90's
Oh good God. What a bunch of manic ferrets people are... the very thought makes me feel 110. Surely there's an age at which people will back off and expect nothing more of you?
Apparently I look younger than I am. That's what people say including the nice bed delivery bloke today. If only seeing were believing though... Raaaaaaaar se...
Perhaps I should wear a Vince Cable mask. Then people would treat me with appropriate care and respect.
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>> Apparently I look younger than I am
Same with me Sire, if I shaved the George Galloway beard orf, and had a £90 Cameron haircut, I'd easily pass for 52, on a dark night in a pea souper.
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>> Perhaps I should wear a Vince Cable mask. Then people would treat me with appropriate
>> care and respect.
Vince Cable - care & respect?
Surely you jest?
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To Rattle.
Go to Howden's and set up a cash account as a Builder. Buy carcasses ready made. There is no benefit in buying poor flat pack from the sheds.
Last edited by: VxFan on Sun 12 Jan 14 at 00:19
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>> Jack LaLanne was still pumping iron in his 90's Sire, his motto was "if man
>> makes it, don't eat it, and, if it tastes good, spit it out".
>>
>> www.imdb.com/name/nm0482364/
>>
He wasn't 90, but he felt like 90 because he had such a miserable life!
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"Living is a pain in the butt. Dying is easy. It's like an athletic event. You've got to train for it.
You've got to eat right. You've got to exercise. Your health account, your bank account, they're the same thing.
The more you put in, the more you can take out. Exercise is king and nutrition is queen: together, you have a kingdom".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_LaLanne#Personal_health_routine
If he had a miserable life, then I want some.
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>> "Living is a pain in the butt. Dying is easy. It's like an athletic event.
>> You've got to train for it.
>>
>> You've got to eat right. You've got to exercise. Your health account, your bank account,
>> they're the same thing.
>>
>> The more you put in, the more you can take out. Exercise is king and
>> nutrition is queen: together, you have a kingdom".
>>
>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_LaLanne#Personal_health_routine
>>
>> If he had a miserable life, then I want some.
>>
And the Thread Drift Award for 2014......
Goes
to......
It's a Joint Award this Year Ladies and Gentlemen
To go from Flat Pack Kitchens to Pumping Iron at 90+
Drum Roll please.......
Put your hands together Boys an Girls, they have worked for this.............
AC and Dog
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When we had the kitchen tiled, we wanted a kind of ornate (and expensive) design rather than plain. Wifey used the interweb to find what factory was making them. It was just a few miles from wifey's home town so we called in while we were in the area. You never know what you might get, so she found a manager and told them what she wanted and hoped for a reduction. They said sure, but check out the 'seconds' too. So we did, inspected through a few boxes of 'rejects' and quite honestly couldn't find a single tile that didn't look normal. It cost a fraction of sale price - fantastic. After that, we had three bathrooms to tile (walls and floors) and the entire ground floor in ceramic - and we did it the same way, knocking doors at factories and eliminating the DIY stores. Huge reductions. All credit to wifey, she negotiated and held her ground throughout almost the entire build.
So Rats, blonde wig, short skirt is the key - borrow Zeros.
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"LaLanne was addicted to sugar as a child, causing him to commit acts of violence, including setting his parents' house on fire and attacking his brother with an axe."
Yeah right. I blame the dealers.
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>> "LaLanne was addicted to sugar as a child, causing him to commit acts of violence,
>> including setting his parents' house on fire and attacking his brother with an axe."
>>
>>
>> Yeah right. I blame the dealers.
>>
Which ones?
B & Q, or Wickes?
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Any experience of flat pack kitchens? - Fursty Ferret
