#22

Sliding door between kitchen and living room?

#23

Went to B&Q and Wickes at the weekend and had some designs drawn up. It’s all very exciting, isn’t it? Clearly we’re going to be kitchenless for a while which is going to be interesting.

I tried this on Twitter and had a few replies but I’d like more: if you have a kitchen which you like please can you post a photo of it (or send me a note)?

#24

Do you have a Wren Kitchens near you? We’ve been putting of getting a kitchen for a while, but will definitely have a look at them.

Someone from work had an absolute disaster using B&Q, someone else had similar with Wickes, but I guess it depends on the fitters.

#25

@1101010 told me not to use Wren and I trust everything he says.

#26

It depends how long you’re planning to live in the flat, but I’d go with Wren over B&Q and Wickes, tbh.

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#27

Yeah well Wren came absolute bottom in the Which? survey of last year (I think they were pretty good the year before).

We were going to go with them but honestly they were really uninterested in us when we went in. IKEA showed far more interest but there’s another aspect there (more later). With Wren we realised quickly how little real work they’d done to check out the dimensions of our kitchen. I think this is because they really REALLY want you to use their fitters so probably any bodges get sorted by those guys. When it came to ringing them about stuff we were always chasing them, not the other way round.

Regarding IKEA, the main issue with their stuff is there’s no real margin for space behind for pipes. So if you’ve a certain type of house, probably your Victorian style one, you just have pipes up from the floor to the sink. In our ex-local authority case the pipes run along the wall at the back, including a pipe the whole length that we can’t remove. IKEA units don’t technically freestand, they attach to a strip of metal screwed into the back wall, so this means you have this weird situation where you either have the full 60cm depth or 40cm depth to give you the space, which is nuts. Or you have to have a builder who’ll put a beam along the wall and attach the units to that.

Anyway, this is why we’re going with Magnet (who are sort of middling I guess in the ratings, from what I recall) with the pre-built units as our builders are using them.

@ynot

#28

How does Magnet compare price wise with Wren? A Magnet store opened at the end of my road a few months back.

I guess most of these depend on the fitters rather than the company as a whole. The lady from works B&Q fitter outsourced it to someone else who totally messed up.

#29

We’re buying a 1960s purpose-built (likely ex-local) 2 bed – having been there again this weekend I can confirm that there are pipes running where the back of the units would be, so I can’t really be arsed with IKEA which is a shame as I quite like their stuff. There wasn’t any real price difference between Wickes and B&Q interestingly.

Not sure if we’ll look at any other places tbh. It’s exhausting.

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#30

Expensive from the looks of things but the builders have a 70% discount… I mean basically it’s clearly all a bit of a racket. No doubt @marckee can give you a better sense. I imagine if you just go in and order then you’ll get a similar sense.

TBH, I would actually say it’s worth looking into starting with finding builders who you like. The guys we’ve found seem good so we’re going with their Magnet choice. Hope to god it’s not fucking awful.

#31

How did you find your builder Theo?

#32

Have you not received a PM from one of esteemed users yet?

#33

Magnet are pretty decent and if you get a good fitter you’ll have a solid, long-lasting kitchen.

As with Wren and Howdens, as long as you go out to a couple of kitchen fitters for quotes (so they are in a competitive tender and pass on the trade discount to you), you should be fine.

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#34

My brother in law is a builder, everyone likes his work. But whenever he does stuff for us and something else comes up he goes to that and fits us in. He wouldn’t do that to a normal customer and in the end if got really annoying as we’d have to wait and not say anything. Ideally I’d get him to do our kitchen but I don’t want the awkwardness of hassle.

But I agree find a builder through recommendation and get them to source the kitchen for you.

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#35

MyBuilder.com

#36

We should ask PN to do a top ten DiSer kitchens run down.

#37

That is not what I meant! But yes, she should.

#38

Blimey have Ikea changed so much in the last ten years? My units most definitely did freestand, on four legs. That said, doing away with the back two to make space, and screwing a supporting beam to the wall is pretty standard and not by any stretch of the imagination rocket science.

I won’t post up the picture of the kitchen that I built and say you should have that, because I’m lazy, but that’s what you should do.

#39

He’s a very rare breed of builder then.

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#40

Yeah it seems to be a more recent thing I think. The builder we got said it probably would all freestand anyway because of the legs and construction, FWIW.

#41

I found a really nice Ikea kitchen last year, it wasn’t freestanding but when I mentioned it to a builder he said he’d charge more for Ikea as they aren’t standard sizes and are fiddly.