Wow, what a lot of comments. I think you have a wonderful kitchen, which has been created with much love & attention to detail. You are asking about painting things in a dark / inky colour - & your Oak unit - but you already have a mid grey wall surrounding the Oak unit - which is why it stands out - take the walls back to an off white & it will blend back in. The lighting in the entire area doesn't seem to be enough for "dark inky colours" - If you really want something like that why not create a picture of what you want on canvas & put it behind glass in the Aga alcove? Your Aga is dark already so it might just make that area a feature. Don't start taking out bits of the kitchen - once you start you will carry on & suddenly your Dad's work will be destroyed, which would be incredibly sad. Your kitchen works well for you - I do agree that the floor could be underfloor heating with tiles on the top - but weigh up the costs before you start. Lighting is everything, so more lights - ceiling not spots -LEDs as many as you can! From the photographs you provide it looks as if the room leading off from the dining area is already a darkish room, & were you to paint the oak any colour at all I think you would regret it - a slight chip there or a knock here & the paint starts to come away - wood is beautiful, it holds history and it gives such beauty - use that as your palate.. Be gentile on your kitchen - try painting paper and then bluetack it to the wall / unit /island etc. so you get an idea of what it might look like if you painted it - a great source of long paper is to be found in the wallpaper isle - you can buy a roll of lining paper for under £5, get the paint test pots & try out your ideas without damaging the beauty you already have.

If this was a traditional painted wood kitchen the kitchen manufacturer would be likely making a wall mounted box to put an off the shelf extractor into. There are plenty that are designed to be used as canopy extractors. So what you need is someone to make the box in the style you like. Kitchen manufacturers probably can’t do it because you want this wrapped in sheet metal. You should work out exactly the dimensions you want, draw a plan and source an extractor and then approach a steel fabricator to build it- he may have to check that the wall can take the weight too.

Their fitting and pairting ARE expensive.... I definitely wouldn’t argue that. I have no idea about handles really, but surely you can argue that you fit them yourself after everything else is completed: so they don’t “handle” them.... Appliance is tricky: they can’t “check and optimise fit” without handling them I think? Presumably if they are painting the cabinets too, they have to lift in and out again? You can have HJ supply only and use your own fitters: that would definitely be cheaper. I don’t think that they dove the same guarantee though. But have heard of people fitting them themselves before. I think that HJ tend to market themselves as the full package (well only dry fit). So far have been very impressed by the service (checking measurements etc). They do carefully check during and after installation etc. I would expect fitting to be spot on. But that is coming at a cost.

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