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Got around £15k to spend on a kitchen - apart from the obvious, what appliances do I need to consider? Was thinking things like an inline water filter, stuff like that.
Don't need a coffee machine (The Gaggia Classic will take pride of place in the new kitchen) and don't want an American-style fridge (we have a separate utility room with an old fridge freezer in so just opting for a small under-counter fridge).
Tell me how to spend my (well the bank's) money please!
Induction hob - best thing we put in our new kitchen
Hate american style thingies, freezer section is always to small - but large fridge and large freezer
More power points than you think - then double it - pout them on a central island if you are having one
USB power points such as [url= http://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-13a-2-gang-sp-switched-socket-usb-charger-brushed-steel/18294 ]this[/url]
Great tap - ours was £300 but when you are buying a new kitchen it doesnt seem so bad
If it's really the bank's money you need to learn to love the old kitchen.
If it's really the bank's money you need to learn to love the old kitchen.
Why? (And I so knew someone would spout this rubbish).
15k on a kitchen ? bloody hell !
It's for all the work including taking out a load-bearing wall, replastering, re-routing lighting, re-routing heating etc.15k on a kitchen ? bloody hell !
just opting for a small under-counter fridge).
We did this, with a full size fridge and a freezer in a utility room. It's not great, to be honest (2 adults, 2 young kids), the under counter fridge just doesn't hold enough for day to day use.
We did this, with a full size fridge and a freezer in a utility room. It's not great, to be honest (2 adults, 2 young kids), the under counter fridge just doesn't hold enough for day to day use.
With the current set-up it's what we are doing and we don't mind it - and I don't want a dirty big thing in there.
a kitchen fitter would help a lot I imagine! 😆
If it's really the bank's money you need to learn to love the old kitchen.Why? (And I so knew someone would spout this rubbish).
Ask Greece. I prefer to save first, spend later.
But if you're spending, buy stuff that works brilliantly, looks good and lasts. Miele dishwasher, Franke sinks, Pegler or Bristan taps and a Mercury range cooker.
I see where the money is going now with all that work.!
Ask Greece. I prefer to save first, spend later.
Fair enough, but we bought a property that needed work doing on it so we borrowed enough to cover the modernisation costs.
Or buy cheaper stuff so when you are sick of looking at it in a few years and want to change you are not throwing money away ?
15k isn't a lot depending on what spec of appliances etc your fitting.
I fitted a 20k kitchen in a new build last year. £5600 for units inc fitting, £5500 for corian tops and the rest went on Miele appliances. It was bloody massive tho!
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Under counter fridge works fine for us. Milk, OJ, drinks, sandwich stuff and condiment jars in there, "meals" type food and everything else in a big American style Samsung in the utility room a few steps away. Kitchen designed so I can both make a cup of tea and unload the dishwasher without moving my feet.
Russ - that doesn't seem much for the units out of that budget. Where were they from?
Lighting in and under cupboards
Ultima furniture. Trade side of DIY kitchens. I fit kitchens and use them a lot.
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I'd recommend a sink grinder; I hate emptying the food waste bin, especially this time of year.
Corian work surfaces and sinks are great if you've the budget for them.
I miss my old kitchen 🙁
That white kitchen looks like a dentist room
£15k doesn't sound all that much if fairly major building work involved too. make sure you have a contingency fund for unseen problems.
I also fit kitchens for a living, I reckon our average job price this year is £25k. max being £54k!!!
Spend a good long time on the design to make sure everything works before committing, I'd look for drawers for base units rather than cupboards, they make access much easier. Good quality but not OTT appliances, I personally like Siemens at the moment, rather than Miele, especially for the budget. 2nd the induction hob, I love ours but make sure you have the juice to run it.
I prefer ovens and fridges in towers if poss but that's personal preference.
Silestone worktops are our current most popular, but are approx £350/m which is still a lot cheaper than Corian.
My favourite kitchen gadget is my Quooker, saves a lot of time and faff but you'd be struggling to justify one on cost alone.
while I can sort of appreciate them, those blank white kitchens do nothing for me, too space aged.
Gas hob surely?
It's for all the work including taking out a load-bearing wall, replastering, re-routing lighting, re-routing heating etc.
How much of the budget is left for the kitchen after that then?
£15k doesn't sound all that much if fairly major building work involved too. make sure you have a contingency fund for unseen problems.
Max of 20k, allowing for contingency. Allowing £4k for other works.
£15k is more than enough to get a really classy high quality kitchen. Don't discount good old laminate worktops. We had granite in our old kitchen and was looking at either real wood or Corian tops or something similarly posh and expensive for our new kitchen, but when we looked at the cost and how good modern laminate worktops are we just decided to economise on the worktops and haven't regretted it - they look great, and really hard wearing and zero maintenance. We also went for the bottom of the range Bosh and Neff appliances - very very good, not as good a Miele, but whilst Meile being at least 4 times the price they're not 4 times as good, so again a good area to economise on without compromising on quality - dishwasher was £230, Neff double oven about £400, gas 5 ring Neff hob around £200 - £300, and £200 on a glass fronted wine/beer fridge. I'll be very old and grey before I have to replace that lot. I think ours came in at about £9k for the kitchen all in - £7k for the kitchen and worktops, £2k for appliances - it's a decent sized kitchen too and it looks great - high gloss white units, soft close, really classy, clean and uncluttered. Economising on that lot enabled me to spend on the areas that I would appreciate more, as it was part of a larger extension - like a chuffing big telly, a Quooker hot tap and a few other luxuries elsewhere in the home.
There are a couple of areas i wish i'd spent a bit more on - the sink and tap. I just went with the one that the kitchen people supplied, look ok but feel a bit cheap - so wish i'd splashed out a bit more on a better sink and tap - but easily replaced in the future should it begin to bother me too much.
Camping cooker, take away menus, phone, valium (could be needed depending on fitter/builder.
Ditto what blazin wrote.
A 2 drawer unit is much more usable that a standard cupboard.
Don't waste money on fancy corner units/pull outs, put the stuff you barely use in them.
Get the best Worktops you can afford, they are what gets the most use and what makes the kitchen stand out.
And don't try and fill every bit of space in the room with units, you really don't need that many.
Induction hob is a must!
We have literally just finished changing our kitchen.pretty much spent £15k of the banks money (and it's not a stupid thing to do, better enjoy it now and adds around £40pm to the mortgage ). I was hoping to get in in nearer 12k but no chance.
No actual structural work but did have to rip off horrible wood panelling and re-plaster everything incl. ceiling, all new electrics (seems Sellotape was a viable wire connector in the past 8O) take up floor and re-level etc. we also re-floored dining room. Fair amount of re-plumbing too.
We went for neff oven, gas hob (I like gas, best for cooking IMO) and also a microwave which is set into wall unit saving worktop space. This is really neat.
Just went for laminate worktop as much easier to maintain than granite/real wood and couldn't afford coriander.
We've got real wood flooring which I think is much nicer looking than tile floor, got the same in dining room. All the flooring cost a grand though.
15k on a kitchen ? bloody hell !
Recently fitted some built-in wardrobes in a house. Their kitchen was 120,000€....
If you are in a hard water area then fit a water softener if you have room. Lovely silky feel water & no limescale to wreck your lovely new shiny chrome.
couldn't afford coriander.
Only about 0.60p in tesco.
Considering using that heavy-duty lino stuff for the floor rather than wood - just worried about it staining if we use wood. And we don't want to use tiles as the open-plan style (ie kitchen/diner) means we would have tile in the eating area which I think would be a bit cold and uninviting.
Unless anyone has any other ideas?....
Two dishwashers if you have space I reckon. Make dinner parties and Xmas dead easy.
Hmmm, interesting consideration (especially as we are designing the kitchen around having space for at least 12 people).
USB power points such as this
I'm very sceptical of cheap USB power supplied, they could easily end up reducing the life of the battery in your phone if they're not well regulated.
it also means you need less cupboard space - if you have 2 dishwashers.....
one dirty and one clean at all times.... just use the dishes straight from the clean one.....no need for a cupboard for them.
Im sure that was a joke on dave gormans genius 😀
mean while i also know a woman whos husband banned her from using the dishwasher as it "uses too much energy" so they store potatoes in it..... - mental.
LG used to do a double dishwasher, my sister has it in Scotland - superb bit of kit - but I think they have discontinued itTwo dishwashers if you have space I reckon
Induction hob over gas anytime
Really don't want induction - I like my wok cooking too much and like to cook the traditional way over a flame.
Can see how a kitchen can cost 15k when walls and power are being moved using contractors. I built this over 4 weeks whilst fitting new central heating. Brick built pantry came out and full rewire adding 7 sockets instead of the original 1. Came in just under 5k with all tiles and appliances.
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[/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/ppAgT9 ]House renovations[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/parkesiemtb/ ]chris[/url],
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[/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/prC1ie ]House renovations[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/parkesiemtb/ ]chris[/url], on Flickr}
Considering using that heavy-duty lino stuff for the floor rather than wood - just worried about it staining if we use wood. And we don't want to use tiles as the open-plan style (ie kitchen/diner) means we would have tile in the eating area which I think would be a bit cold and uninviting.Unless anyone has any other ideas?....
My only comment about flooring would be to avoid anything too dark - it looks great when it's just been cleaned, but about 30 seconds later even the smallest crumb will be visible from space...
Unless you're going for the unfitted look then definitely build in the microwave - they look stupid sitting on a worktop when you've carefully integrated everything else. And I'd second the waste disposal unit. And if we were starting again on the kitchen I'd have to make allowances for the million or so recycling containers that we now need...
Microwave - definitely going to have that built-in – we are planning on having one floor to ceiling unit with lots of storage space for cleaning stuff, microwave and probably a 'larder' of sorts so all our tins, jars and packets are easy to find.
Waste disposal unit - we compost so most of our waste goes in there.
Recycling - we have that sorted in the utility (ie, it all gets bunged into the sink in there and occasionally decanted to the boxes outside).
+1 on the recommendation to think about good lighting, under cabinets etc. makes a big difference to our kitchen. Especially as I'm tall and tend to block out ceiling lights.
Also +1 on drawers over cupboards. Crockery/cups/glasses drawers beside the dishwasher in ours makes unloading super easy.
if you want to use a wok mix and match some Domino hob units have induction + Gas
We've got Corian worktops, with a moulded-in Corian sink.
I love them...
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Freeagent - are you from Planet Tron?
(Nice kitchen - the sort of thing we will be doing I think).
something my dad did with his kitchen at home (having fitted hundreds over the years) was no wall hung cupboards.
i will be doing the same when the time comes.
my own and everyone elses kitchens with wallhung cupboards just seem compromised / dark and a pain to work in - even with undercab lighting
so my 50 p is no wallhung cupboards if you have the space and a tall one or two if you really need the storage space
oh and the no handle kitchens above look unfinished - i know no handles is trendy but it looks like its waiting on someone to come round and fit the handles to it.....
so my 50 p is no wallhung cupboards if you have the space and a tall one or two if you really need the storage space
Yeah we are going for floor units only - with the big floor to ceiling unit to ensure we don't run out of storage space.
so my 50 p is no wallhung cupboards if you have the space and a tall one or two if you really need the storage space
Yes, this. A lot of the 'kitchen advice' we read was you can never have enough cupboards/storage but really glad we stuck with just the one wall hung unit and a floor to ceiling cupboard.
Same with the sockets in, i.e. think how many you need and double it, actually 4 double sockets is more than enough, 8 would just be silly.
Considering using that heavy-duty lino stuff for the floor rather than wood - just worried about it staining if we use wood. And we don't want to use tiles as the open-plan style (ie kitchen/diner) means we would have tile in the eating area which I think would be a bit cold and uninviting.Unless anyone has any other ideas?....
We went with a cheaper Karndean/Amtico product called Colonia from a company called Polyflor (they do a Camaro range too) on a recommendation from a friend (they're basically a shop floor company getting into the domestic market). Less choice than the 10,000 combinations you get from Karndean but looks really nice in a light limestone effect with the grout strips.
Make sure the orignal floors are really finished - the original boards in the kitchen were a bit ropey and not a perfect match to the newer extension part and I can feel a dip under my feet occasionally despite the plywood cover under the tiles.
Same with the sockets in, i.e. think how many you need and double it, actually 4 double sockets is more than enough, 8 would just be silly.
The thing with sockets is not necessarily about the total number you need concurrently, but about where they are located. Get the locations right and it's all good. More sockets increases the chances of one being where you need it in the future when [s]you change your mind[/s] your wife changes her mind and moves stuff around.
But this is coming from someone who had 5 double sockets in a camper van to cover all possibilities and avoid trailing leads.
Re. The flooring. We got real oak flooring sealed with some kind of resin from floors 2 go. We've got it in the hall kitchen and dining room, really links the rooms together. We did the hallway first and so got an offcut and left a bit of water, a wet tea bag, some curry powder and some pesto on it over a weekend, wiped it off with no staining at all.
I'll post some pics this eve when I get a chance
That sounds interesting Ferrals - does it work having the same floor go straight through from the hall? We are going to do that soon anyway so it might be worthy of consideration to lay the floor at the same time.
Hmmm
We like it. I love the wood floor, cool on the feet but not cold like tiles.
Few photos:
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And the kitchen (not quite finished, touching up and tilling etc to go, went to look at tiles this arvo but the ones we liked were £100 per sq. m!!)
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Depending on space and budget how about a commercial dish washer, does a cycle in about 5-10 mins, but £££ (Russ any experience?).
Always great planning a kitchen, view from sink important for some;)