There’s a concept planner on here, OnePlan, whom often designs kitchens for people using DIY. Once the design is finalised Karen gives you a shopping list for DIY. I'm pretty sure people have just sent the shopping list and plan to DIY. Given you have a plan and list, can you ring them and check they’ll offer this for you? I’m not expecting they’ll take responsibility for any errors though so you’d need to double check it.

Not really sure how easy it is to negotiate with Howdens, my dad just has but hardly a massive discount particularly given what they’re charging. I’m not sure how much you’re paying for fitting but have you also tried independents? Just thinking though if you went with DIY will that reduce fitting costs? Pretty sure their cabinets come assembled whereas I think Howdens are flat packed?

That's great help. Thank you, I'll have a look. The fitter has quoted £960 for this Howdens kitchen

Good luck! i must admit i tried using their planner in the past and gave up!

Howdens are really expensive, 8k for 13 cabinets, doors, trims, sink and tap seems a bit much, i'm currently working on a 17 unit kitchen with bespoke size units and doors, all the trims and pull outs coming in at 6k.

I think you'd be better off looking for a local independant kitchen designer/supplier. You'd get a better quality cabinet, better quality doors, better ironmongery, better design and more choice.

So i'd shop around, visit some local independant kitchen studios with the plan so they can do a like for like quote for you, then if you like their quote you can ask them to give you a better design or take their quote and use that to haggle with Howdens.

For the fitting costs, this may go up if you don't get the kitchen from your fitter though, as Howdens may of given him 2 quotes, one for you and the one that he pays on his account.