How do I bathroom / kitchen / extension? etc.

Having lived in flats with circulators, I would only ever have one in the most extreme and impossible of circumstances. I would happily design my kitchen around having proper extraction if necessary and when we do change our kitchen put a proper powerful extractor in.

From a quality of life perspective removing moisture and smells is huge.

We have a re-circulating extractor hood, gets used for the lights 99% of the time and only goes on when frying. Doesn't really do anything, but makes me feel better about it.

well that's a wake up . last time I bought a sheet of 18mm B/BB (2009) it was 50 quid - now .... £200. also Russian...booo.

Richard Russell: BB/BB 18mm £124 ex VAT

You could buy a plunge saw with the difference and make your own fronts.

I’m wondering if all ply walls will be cheaper than plaster.

As tempting as buying some plywood & doing the cutting myself is - past experience tells me that the outcome wouldn't be to the desired standards!
Just seems crazy for the most expensive thing in the kitchen to be the cupboard doors!

Does it? The carcasses are insane economy of scale chipboard boxes made in low labour cost countries.

At least you’re looking at the expensive bits.

Plywood is expensive. We had a quote from a kitchen company for the doors but carcasses were still chipboard so we went with a local independent company who've made us a lovely full ply kitchen for about the same rate as some of our other quotes.

(Discounting the wren and Magnet quotes as the options were gash)

Probably Latvian. Russian seemed to be a sales term rather than country of origin last time I looked.

Our new extractor is ducted through the ceiling between joists to an external wall. Can you not do the same? Or go full Industrial and have steel duct suspended from the ceiling?

I forsee a spate of ply burglaries in East London and Dulwich. Much like church roofs in the early '00s.

I've always like this idea.

Although I reckon you'd want to have it much closer to the ceiling and you would in a commercial premises, and have some sort of wipe clean paint to make build up of dust and fag less visible /easier to deal with.

@dbr & @Grumpy_Git - both fair points!
Bit of an eye opener really - going in to talk to them & see if it's the options we've picked that are pushing it up or just that they really are just that expensive, hopefully we can tweak it down a bit.

You can tell they aint paying for that with that thickness.

Kitchen is finished at last!

We kept the existing kitchen, which was built by us about 10 years ago, but switched the patio doors for bifolds, knocked through to an existing side return to turn it into a utility area, and had marmoleum fitted (but don't look too closely as it's not perfect)

Utility isn't quite finished. The units are DIY kitchens and TBH I'm not that impressed given their reputation. Wasn't going to spend golf club money on a utility though.

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Nice spice rack!

Has anyone painted laminate kitchen cabinets with success?

yeah the first option is what I plan to do or what I assume we'd have to do, just havnt had anyone round yet. Second option our kitchen is too small.

Can anyone recommend a decent brand of integrated extractor hood?
Looking for something that can shift a decent volume of air and has some decent features that could maybe allow it to come on at various intervals during the day to help with changing the air on the ground floor?

Yeah I painted my Ikea ones (in my utility).
Had to use a decent primer but nothing other than that, no issues so far...

Good to know thanks. Did you sand? Got a guide you followed? Remember what primer and pain?

Gimme a nudge in a few days when I have time to dig through my paint cupboard... and yeah, bit of sanding pre and between coats.

Cross post from architecture... I'm looking for a window that looks like this as part of a dining room re-model. It's surprisingly hard to find real detail on window options or prices - any pointers in the right direction would be really appreciated

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Maxlight and first fold sliding doors do aluminium ones, I got quotes for around 2-6k.

Thanks - will check them out. 6k seems high though! I'm guessing that's top spec?

Actually, correction…

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