Kitchen Retailers - Who do you recommend or who to avoid

[MattEMulsion]

Has anyone got any advice on who is a good retailer from which to buy a new kitchen from? We've had a couple of free designs done (one by B&Q, one by Wren), and we've been round a few other retailers of kitchens big and small. Apart from everything else we are overwhelmed by the choices available.

Anyway its easy to find horror stories on the internet about most kitchen retailers, but has anyone got any advice or real world experience of who's good and who should be avoided at all costs?
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[mudcow007]

My mum an dad used Wren an basically got ripped off, luckily hey got it all resolved in the end but it took months.....the finished kitchen still looks shit too

[duhawkz]

Inlaws got one fitted by b&q, well the kitchen was bought from b&q but b&q subbed out the fitting to an local independent kitchen fitter

Looks ok and they did a decent enough job
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[duhawkz]

Seen loads of complaints on facebook over how bad wren are, kitchens literally falling off the walls and stuff.

Check out the following groups
Wren kitchens disasters
Wren kitchens nightmares
Wren kitchens beware
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"The guy is a worthless cunt and I honestly believe I would be a slightly happier person if he died." - Chris-Red

[Ste]

It's been a while since we've had kitchen spam on BCF.

If this thread catches their attention and we get flooded with kitchen spam then it'll be your fault.

[Suntan Sid]

If you've got the time, you could look at second hand, and grab a high end kitchen at a bargain price.
We bought a used, top of the range, Magnet kitchen for peanuts, just needed a bit of a clean and fitting, a very sturdy kitchen.
Had some units left over and sold them on!

A new kitchen, base units are much of a muchness, it's the fixtures and finishes you need to spend the money on.

We'll be doing a new kitchen soon, we'll be shopping around and have no worries buying bits and pieces from different sources.
If you can fit it yourself you'll save a fortune and you can customise it as you go along.
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[andyscooter]

mum and dad had a Homebase one

again subbed out to a local independent fitter

only problem they had was bloke who measured it had measured it all wrong and didn't plan for dishwasher opening into a drawer handle

works of you open the washer very slowly
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[c_dug]

We had a Howdens kitchen done about 6 months back, and honestly couldn't fault them at all.

I'm getting on for 18 stone and I'll sit on the counter without worrying at all. The drawers and cupboards are all soft close, the finish is good, the fit is perfect (and we have a funny size Kitchen). Really impressed.

We really had our hearts set on one from b&q, we had the design complete and ready to go. Howdens got as close to the design as they could and were somewhere in the region of half the price.

Oh, and they threw in a nifty porcelain sink for free, and did us a fantastic price on engineered wood flooring to boot.

I half expected a hand job on the way out (we got two free easter eggs instead).
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[grr666]

I rate Benchmarx (Trade only). They are exactly the same kitchens Wickes sell. Only real difference is that the
carcasses come pre assembled. Which speeds up fitting a great deal. I worked for them as a stand in warehouseman
for a few months just before I moved to Bristol so am very familiar with their products. I have also fitted their kitchens.
Soft close everything, 18mm thick back panel on all cabinets, 50mm service gap designed in to make plumbing, drainage
and electric routing easier. decent guarantee. You do have to haggle them on price a bit.
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[bamt]

With B&Q and the like you end up reliant on the quality of their local subcontractors.

We ended up semi-DIYing. Got a builder in to demolish a non-load bearing wall (that also involved removing gas pipes), replaster the ceiling to cover where the wall used to be and sort the electrics with a new consumer unit and power for the hob.

The units came from Ikea - very good quality for the price, and a wide variety of twiddly bits available. It's also useful to be able to make changes as you go - if something doesn’t work out quite right you can always change it for another bit off the shelf. We ended up changing our mind on how the drawers inside a cupboard should be, for example, once we'd lived with it for a few weeks (changing to fewer deeper drawers). That would have been harder with a professionally fitted kitchen.

There is a slight funny in that they don't have space for services behind the units, you are expected to run them below. That meant a bit of extra plumbing work for me, but does mean the cupboards are marginally deeper. The money we saved there meant we could get a professionally fitted stone worktop (absolutely recommend these - so much better than wood!), high end ceramic sink etc. within the same budget that would have seen us having a fully fitted one put in. It did take us a few weeks to finish off though, so not ideal if you've got a young family or can't stand living in a building yard.

[recman]

[BTTD]

I bought an Ikea oak one 15 years ago and fitted it myself. It still looks smart and nothing has fallen apart.
Guy I know who works for B&Q got a Wren one as he preferred the design etc, and has had to get all the doors replaced as they have faded at different rates so he had a miss-matched kitchen with some doors having faded with a light green tint. It took a lot of back and forth before they accepted there was a problem and they won't pay for fitting (all the handles need drilling, and there's thirty or so doors!).
He's said he wished he'd gone with a B&Q one!
I'd definitely look at Ikea ones again if my next place needs a kitchen.

[Speedy2007]

Another one for Howdens. Great quality and reasonable prices. If you contact your local branch they will give you a list of fitters they work with as they're trade only. Having said that I had a problem with a decor panel and they were happy to change it for me on sight of the fitters invoice.

[waffles]

My parents had their kitchen done by Wickes a couple of years ago and it looks pretty sweet. Wickes did the design work and supplied the fixtures/cabinets/work tops and a local independent fitter actually did the work.

The finished result looks really good and is full of little bits that are really nice like the soft close drawers and doors and snazzy flip out corner units. They did the utility room too with an old fashioned butlers sink. My folks are pretty pleased with the actual room but less impressed with Wickes themselves due to removal of the old kitchen. They were promised a skip, then one of those big hippo(?) bags which was late arriving so the old kitchen was left on the driveway. However their follow-up service was good and a couple of issues were sorted really quickly.
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[weasley]

We had a Benchmarx one fitted 4 years ago. Decent stuff and still in good shape.
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[Wonko The Sane]

[thx1138]

Mate was contracted to fit one for a flat, and he paid me to help, did it either side of Christmas, and got paid at the end, so job finished Jan 2017.

Went via B&Q Trade counter, I think.

What-a-carry-on.

Wrong items, to wrong locations. Endless messing about with returns, and re-deliveries.

Some bits delivered by B&Q, some by courier companies, some by tatty old man with a-very-rusty van. Inability to find us. Bowed work tops. Faulty cookers. Wrong sized units.

Job just went on and on.

Finished job was okay,and it was a nice kitchen at the end, and they did supply everything we paid for, eventually.

[Baffler186]

Choose your doors, drawer covers, handles and hinges from an independent. We got all of ours for £1k which included the chap coming over and measuring up properly. Hardest part is finding these people though, marketing is not their strong point, as ours was a one man show.

You can also get them to order matching adhesive veneers if you want to cover the fronts of fridges etc.

For the worktops we went to a large timber merchants like this

https://www.totemtimber.co.uk/

They are either the cheapest, or for not much more you are getting a superior finish. I used leftover worktop to make a chopping board, and have chopped loads on it, left red hot pans on it and there's not a single mark.

The cupboards - we used the old carcasses as they worked fine. Any additional new ones we got from B&Q which were about £18 a year ago. Same with the drawers, but make sure you check the drawers from B&Q as they tend to mix and match the drawer runners and stick them in the same box, resulting in a PITA to fit them level.

You could do much if it yourself, but you'll need a professional with the proper jig (£80 on it's own) and a router for the worktops to get nice neat joins.

I think our total bill was £1800 but my old man didn't charge for labour. That was about 8 metres of worktop (chipboard, not solid), 15 cupboards, 9 drawers, including all the soft-close hinges etc.
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[rpsmith79]

Depends on budget really

We had our kitchen replaced just under year ago, and we went to the usual places (B&Q, Wren, Wickes, Howdens)

B&Q worked out the cheapest for us, helped by the fact they offered 2 years interest free

Wren looked cheap to start with, but then didn't offer fitting on their budget range, and after phoning many independent builders/kitchen fitteres, no one wanted to touch a Wren kitchen (or Wickes fior that matter), they would all pretty much exclusively fit only Howdens kitchens (which are top notch), but worked out nearly twice the price of a B&Q kitchen

We spec'd up the B&Q kitchen with a few nice frills (soft close doors/drawers, prestige pan drawers, glass sink etc) and got a really nice kitchen out of it at a very reasonable price IMO
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[Tankie]

B&Q can be very expensive, their free planning service leaves big problems that the contractor/ installer has to try to rectify ,if you need an installer
get a local carpenter, who should also help with the planning
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[rpsmith79]

[ride_to_die]

Replaced my kitchen a few years ago. Bought a large ex showroom kitchen from Magnet. I then picked which bits would go where etc because it was much larger than what I needed. Had to compromise on a few bits but had a brilliant kitchen fitter who solved a lot of fitment issues.
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[DrSnoosnoo]

We've just had a Wren one done. Pre-assembled carcasses were super helpful. Service gap at the back for all services. Everything measured right. We had one warped door, replacement was sent out fast.

We had our own fitter though. I really do think it's the fitter that makes it. They will purely farm out fitting to the lowest bidder to make the best margin. The rep at the shop told us to get our own because they just charge a chunk on top of what a fitter would want paying anyway.

https://i.imgur.com/53Z21IGl.jpg

Edit - sorted picture and the cupboards are enormous.
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[Hex]

https://www.diy-kitchens.com/

Preassembled (as per howdens etc) and literally any color you could want.

The downside is you have to measure and order units individually, but if you spend some time doing it it is worth it, our kitchen with granite worktops was about 6k when quotes from other places where coming it at 12-14k.

Fitted myself apart from the worktop which was templated and fitted in the price.

Won't ever use anywhere else for a kitchen, maybe a design and measure but that would be it.
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[garth]