I do the opposite, I pick a house with a $hit kitchen and then move in and do it up. When you selling?I think I'm just going to stick with my policy of moving house when I need a new kitchen.
Seems like you can do all the research in the world and still get ripped off.
Is there a company out there who will sort everything? Design, delivery, install, appliances, electrics, plumbing, plastering etc?
Ideally I just want to go to a showroom, pick a kitchen, they then project manage the whole thing including measuring and planning.
We've always used Howdens and always been happy with the quality. We're just getting another sorted at the minute.
Design and price from Howdens via our fitter and then share that quote with their competitors to get some better comparison quotes to take back to Howdens to beat those.
Was so close to going with DIY Kitchens who I've heard nothing but great things about from those in the trade but ultimately the work I had to do in designing and ordering the whole thing was too much for me. I was worried I'd fcuk the whole thing up whereas the CAD design done by Howdens was brilliant.
The benefit of Howdens is there's so many trade stores and stock is always really close to hand.
I've just shared our Howdens quote with Wren today to see how much they can knock off our quote and will do the same with all of the competitors too.
From the research I've done, Wren seem to be storming things because of the credit as some have mentioned above.
Oh no Mam’s just bought one! It was all very flash - it reminded me of a car showroom from a customer service and employee attire point of view. I wasn’t keen anyway as they are a big doner to the Tory party but I was overruled lol!Or rather lack of it.....
Has anybody had any dealing with a well privately owned kitchen company, with a green banner and a bird as its logo? Rather than name them we will just call them Bren Kitchens.
If you haven't then I suggest you stay well clear!!
My kitchen was delivered on the 15th April, we proceeded to open the kitchen at it became apparent each unit was damaged. chips in the caucus's, wonky doors and shelving, scratches and scrapes all over the internals, blobs of glue, much stuck to the glue, edging peeling away and uneven colours on the door fronts.
we are sending back 38, units frontals, we are keeping two work tops a sing and 2 plinths and the appliances - which are yet to be opened due to issues with available room in my house.
We raised a complaint on that day, and each day thereafter only be told we would be called back at said time. The call back never came. We have spent the best part of the week on phone trying to get this resolved.
After 4 days the said company have agreed to replace these in 10 working days from when they placed the order. Advising us not to book any trades men until 10 days after this has arrived in case they have any issues then they will have time to get a replacement out.
This is a goodwill gesture on their part, and I quote
"We have agreed to replace the items in the absence of a full review, after reviewing your pictures I am confident a proportion of the items are merely cosmetic and are of satisfactory quality. The goodwill gesture I have extended it to replace these regardless."
Get a design drawn up by howdens and send it to diy kitchens and they will match it for you saving you most of that design work.I’m considering using diy-kitchens.com for our renovation. There’s quite a lot of work to do yourself in terms of basically designing the thing in the first place but I’m told it’s worth it for the amount of options you can choose from and ultimately the cost. I’m sure there are numerous resources to draw inspiration from.
We did the same, went with the posh showroom, I wanted to look elsewhere but wife over ruled. Big regret...Oh no Mam’s just bought one! It was all very flash - it reminded me of a car showroom from a customer service and employee attire point of view. I wasn’t keen anyway as they are a big doner to the Tory party but I was overruled lol!
Do Howdens actually give you a copy of the design? I thought most places just show you the design on a screen to prevent you from doing exactly what you’ve just described?Get a design drawn up by howdens and send it to diy kitchens and they will match it for you saving you most of that design work.
Howdens may also match their price, depending on the discount level your fitter is passing on to you as it’s practically random what each fitter gets
I ended up doing exactly this in the end and saved £4000. It's madness really.MSE advice is usually to get the cad design and list of units etc from howdens and send it direct to diy kitchens, they will then directly price match it and you can use that in the way that you have done with other suppliers to bring price down further. If you do end up going with them it’s based on the existing howdens design, and installers generally like it as the units arrive assembled
we used Steve Smith Joinery to fit our kitchen last year - he's pretty busy but does good work. he then did a friend's on our recommendation and they were pleased as wellI'm currently trying to get a kitchen fitted but we are struggling to find anyone.
Do you have any recommendations Boro in Devon?
We originally had a quote from Kitchens Plus bathrooms which started at 32k, then went to 26k and then it went to 21k. We didn't like the fact they could drop the price so easily so we decided against it.
So did you get a quote from DIY that howdens’s then price matched against?I ended up doing exactly this in the end and saved £4000. It's madness really.
I really wanted to try DIY kitchens because I've heard nothing but good things but it was just too much of a hassle and Howdens promised to beat any competitor's quote by 10% of the difference between their original quote and anything cheaper that I found.
Kitchen all ordered with the benefit of all items being in stock and there being 2/3 stores within 10 miles
I got Howdens to come and do a full CAD design and chose the kitchen that we wanted.So did you get a quote from DIY that howdens’s then price matched against?
Trouble with this is the amount of “discount” they give to tradesmen varies wildly and probably isn’t an accurate reflection of what it’s likely to be if you just open a fresh account?you can get a trade account at Howdens even if you are a member of the public, at least i did in order to get a kitchen quote 2 years back.
For fitters https://www.instagram.com/solo_kitchens_/ my mate gaz runs solo kitchens and is excellent but busy as ever