Planning a new Kitchen
The most important part of Kitchen Design is the planning, a visit to your local kitchen showroom will give you ideas on what is available either on display in the showroom or choose an ideal layout from a kitchen brochure.
Take your measurements with you
Draw the shape of your existing kitchen on a piece of paper including any windows, doors or radiators which may cause an obstruction and ask your local kitchen showroom to design it for you, they may also give you ideas what you had not thought of making your kitchen design unique
Kitchen Units
You can choose from a wide choice of colours, styles and finishes of kitchen units, doors and cupboard handles
Worktops
Choose the perfect work top for your kitchen with a wide choice of laminate wood, granite and colour decors all available in a variety of edge profiles either curved, rounded or a square edge styles using natural products like marble or granite and man-made materials such as high quality laminate or corian
Appliances
kitchen appliances such as built in ovens, hobs, integrated fridge and freezer, sinks, taps and many other things to compliment your new kitchen
January 23rd, 2006 at 11:48 am
I have moved house in the last few months and the kitchen is in dire need of replacing…but fitting a new kitchen seems such a huge and disruptive task…especially when I have 2 young kids. When a proffessional kitchen installer comes do they expect the room to be completely empty, like carpet fitters do, or will the rip out the old kitchen and fit the new kitchen in the whole process?
Thanks for any advice
Janet
January 23rd, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Hello Janet
The kitchen installer will carry out all of the work you require including the removal of the existing kitchen and any alterations to plumbing and electrical work for your new kitchen layout plus the removal into a skip for all the rubbish
You will have to empty the cupboards for them though
January 23rd, 2006 at 1:56 pm
How long would you expect it to take for a new kitchen to be installed from scratch including ripping out the old? I can’t imagine how I would cope without a kitchen…I’d probably have to move to a hotel or something!
January 23rd, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Without seeing the size of your kitchen and the layout you have in mind it would be difficult to give an exact time but for an average size room suitable for a family of 4 it should not take more than a week including the removal of your old kitchen and making good any wall and floor surfaces.
After a couple of days the new kitchen units will be installed and maybe the kitchen worktops so part of your new kitchen could be used in the evenings so as not to cause too much inconvenience to you and your family
Additional time may be needed for any wall tiling which may you may require and vinyl tiles or carpet to the kitchen floor
July 12th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Hi Mr BuildIt
Just thought I’d update you… after 6 months I finally got round to sorting out my new kitchen. Instead of spending the 10’s of thousands of pounds with a kitchen designer / fitting company I brought in my local builder and between us we got the kitchen sorted. My husband & I did most of the ripping out which was quite fun… but we have had endless problems with Howdens. We bought all of the units and appliances from Howdens via our builder so we could get it at trade price but the quality and service was shocking.
The carcasses were generally poorly assembled, even though my builder friend has previously had no problems with them. A couple of the caracasses were chipped so they had to be swopped. A 1000 unit and various other bits were missed off the delivery list, the doors had a rough finish to them where glue had come out, the worktops when we finally unwrapped them had adhesive smeared down them, the cooker was faulty so that ended up going back so we bought one online, and the fridge/freezer when we unpacked it was transit damaged but since we had had it more than 14 days we have had to go through the warranty process. The kitchen itself is nearly complete, 2 and a half weeks later …. just flooring and sockets to be done now, but I have never had such a bad experience with a supplier before, and I would not recommend that anyone uses Howdens. From what people have said to me while I have been having my problems is that Howdens was top quality and recently they have started to cut corners… yep I can certainly agree with that.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
Hello Janet
Thanks for the update on your kitchen and I am sorry to hear you had so many problems with the quality of the kitchen units and service from your kitchen supplier especially with your new kitchen being one of the most expensive items you will purchase for your home
It seems to be the quaility control with the manufacturers who supply Howdens is the problem and I would certainly complain to either your local Howdens branch or get the details of Howdens head office and pass all of your complaints including photos of the glue on the surface of the doors and worktops and all the other problems to them
Please let us know how you get on as that type of service you recieved from a UK nationwide company like Howdens is certainly not acceptable
August 2nd, 2006 at 12:30 am
Sorry to here about janets problem with howdens,..good job she did not go to the others then….how would she have felt when the items had to be reordered…and would take 4-6 weeks to arrive.
howdens depots only supply and most staff at depots really try to help…..where else could you swap a damaged carcass on the same day?….
February 24th, 2007 at 7:41 am
I feel you had pretty good service from Howdens. I used a specialist kitchen company - for sake of reference I will call them In-Toto. They claim highest quality and fully qualified fitters. They suffered from the same problems you mention i.e excess glue dripping from carcases and most of their stuff is cheap chipboard and thin MDF. And their fully assembled units that are claimed to be beter than flat packs are just stapled together!! They fitted a damaged worktop then tried to claim we burned it with a hot pan - before the hob was installed! When you complain they say - this is how we received it from the factory in Germany so that’s how it is. And their “fully qualified” fitters announced on arrival that they were not qualified to touch gas, electricity or plumbing - what a disaster! Nothing like same day exchange - more like 4 months of arguing. I’d have done better at B & Q
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