WWYD - Redoing kitchen within current footprint

last year

Hi,

Hoping for some advice - sorry in advance for the long post!

We're looking to get our kitchen redone as it's falling apart and doesn't have space for a freezer or dishwasher. It's pretty small - roughly 2.5x2.5 metres - and an L shape layout currently as below. We live in a pretty standard terrace and it's at the back of the house looking onto the garden, with a door into a 1.5m x 3m side return.

We've got quotes and a design for turning it into a galley kitchen with the same footprint. This would involve turning the window into a door and vice versa. The total cost of the new kitchen and labour is about £17k (the cheapest of 3 quotes and an ikea kitchen). The reason we're wanting to do this is:

-keeping the L shape but switching our undercounter fridge for a tall fridge-freezer would mean the loss of our main counter space. we'd "make do" with a freestanding trolley; with the galley we'd have 1.5m of new counter space on the sink side, plus a foot+ on either side of the cooker

-with the L shape we'd only have one set of drawers and a corner base cupboard (hate these with a passion); with the galley we'd have 3 sets of drawers and no corners :)

-with the galley we'd have space for a range cooker, which is our heart's desire

-lovely connection to the garden. a side return which is freed up for a workbench and some nice planting instead of being a sad thoroughfare

The question - are we being foolish in not going even further and extending into the side return? the quote we've received for this + a new kitchen is 35k!!! But it could mean added value, more cupboard space, a breakfast bar etc. There's just two of us plus the dog.

For background, we bought our house for £465k in september 2021. It was pretty dated and so far we've spent maybe £9k on replastering, repairing the sash windows, sanding the floors, rewiring, decorating, and furniture. We still need to do the kitchen, bathroom, and garden, which are all dilapidated, and some more furniture.

Two doors down a beautiful turn-key house with a side conservatory (rather than extension) sold for £505k (the offer accepted was £530k but this was bargained down for reasons unknown).

20 doors down a turn-key house with a back extension of 4m2 (rather than side extension) sold for £512k.

4 doors down a house with a kitchen with same footprint but no kitchen door to the garden (so more kitchen units), and a dormer loft conversion sold for £550k.

These were all sold between june 2021 and january 2022 and are otherwise the same as our house.

What would you do? Is there another option which we're missing?

Thanks!

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (4)

HU-925092945
Original Author
last year
On another note is £9.5k for labour in London unreasonable? The other quotes were 11k and 12.5k but have just seen another post where someone paid £2.3k for labour to fit a massive beautiful kitchen with a billion appliances
Daisy England
last year
last modified: last year
Do you do a lot of cooking to need a range cooker especially bearing in mind there are only 2 of you?

Out of the 2 options you mention above l would go with the galley kitchen for the points you raise : corners and extra worktop space. Corner situations can prove problematic regarding access hence why l always allow for a 900L.

If it is within your buget to extend then that is going to be the better option overall because you will get a larger area and it should add to the cost of the property.

Materials and labour are very expensive at the moment.
HU-925092945 thanked Daisy England
Related Discussions
Kitchen refurbishing
Q
Comments (17)
We are just deciding on how to split our budget of 'as little as possible' to make our kitchen liveable for next 12-18 months before we gut it and completely remodel. Obviously we want to spend as little as we can as everything we spend is money we can't spend on the rest of the house renovation. Our problem is that many of our units are in very damaged / poor condition due to a leaking sink, we we will also need to replace. There is also hardly any storage. - we can't have (cheap) open shelving because our naughty cats are ninjas and like to climb and knock things off. Any advice or tips would be appreciated. I was thinking of either getting a few basic ikea units, and a large dresser off gumtree or eBay - or trying to pick up an entire kitchen second hand off eBay and painting it?
...See More
advice on kitchen layout
Q
Comments (21)
I think there are a number of number of people and designers who use Ikea carcasses, you should be able to find tips online but key is design and good fitting (it might be worth spending some of your budget on design to ensure you have a safe design that works plus avoid any costly mistakes. I would try OnePlan on here) https://www.remodelista.com/posts/21-ikea-kitchens-budget-design-hack-custom-fronts/ In terms of the Quartz , you can wrap an "existing" worktop. colourhappy who Is on here had a new kitchen installed and had a cheap moisture resistant worktop fitted and then had the Quartz overlay fitted. I'm not sure which company she used but it may be worth creating another post as I think she saved quite a bit of money by doing it this way. I've attached a link for one such company anyway http://www.stonecoverkitchens.co.uk
...See More
Open plan kitchen/living room layout advice
Q
Comments (11)
What you might find is that if you take this info to a kitchen designer that the layout provided will be completely different to what your architect has (surprisingly) come up with. Personally as a designer, I’d have a completely different take on this room area - but then I Design Kitchens and space concepts for a living - (but ask me to design a building with roof angles and all that that entails etc and I’d be out of my depth a little ! ) So it’s just a case of choosing someone who specialises in this particular area really - we are independent so we don’t sell products that would include a profit - so we charge for our services and work with you over a week to thrash it out - but then you can shop around easily by dropping in a copy of the plans and asking for their best price and haggle for discounts that are often far greater than our design fee. Alternatively you can book loads of studios to each send over their sales people to each come over and measure and each then design a scheme and each then try to win the sale by inviting you to go through their ideas in their studio. Although this is ‘free’ it’s maybe a tad more time consuming, repetitive and you don’t usually have much input. If you click on my name or icon you can read some comments from past clients who’ve tried this way !
...See More
Kitchen design help
Q
Comments (11)
Interesting space and not something I would expect to see in the UK. These days floating wall shelves are very popular rather than lots of wall units, and are available in all sorts of styles; for example:- By the way, I question the insurance companies stand on the kitchen replacement. I would expect them to cover all of the units to a comparable value of the existing. Afterall it is almost certainly not possible to match the existing wall units that have remained. Having a mismatched kitchen is hardly reasonable and so they should cover full replacement of all units and this is what I would be pushing for in your position.
...See More
HU-925092945
Original Author
last year
Thanks Daisy, we do loads of cooking and I'm hoping to start a catering business over the next year, so will need loads of storage/cold storage, counter space and oven space! Sadly the extra 17k is probably outside our budget in terms of monthly payments/period of repayment, plus looking at what other houses in the street have sold for we're not sure we'd actually recoup the money.
PRO
Lifestyle Kitchens
last year
wow 17k for an ikea kitchen, that is really very expensive, someone is taking the p. I'd keep shopping around.

check out some independants and get some more designs done.

WWYD - Redoing kitchen within current footprint

Comments (4)

HU-925092945
Original Author

Daisy England

Related Discussions

HU-925092945
Original Author

Lifestyle Kitchens

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

WWYD - Redoing kitchen within current footprint

Comments (4)

HU-925092945Original Author

Daisy England

Related Discussions

HU-925092945Original Author

Lifestyle Kitchens

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

HU-925092945
Original Author

HU-925092945
Original Author