Kitchen's Kitchen

How goes the chefs training?

I think Miele do a demo thing... I wonder what that is. Connoisseur Club or something... must check up on that once I get the hob.

Where's the pendant from?

https://www.heals.com/multi-lite-pendant-brass-base.html
Photos upthread somewhere.

If people are interested I'll go round and take a lot of photos of details of workmanship, etc and some of the choices that were made along the way.

Yes please!

Will do this later today... Monday and Tuesday are my super busy meeting days so I didn't have a chance, but before I put more things back in cupboards I shall take pics.

Can’t wait to see worktop.

Like the strip light DK.

A new window would finish kitchen off.

How’s the contingency looking ? ;)

How’s the contingency looking ? ;)

Well... let's say that at no point did I enter into "value engineering"... the last things to go in, like the lighting, worktop, sink, etc... were chosen with the same eye to quality above everything else as the first things to go in.

I started with £76k in the bank, thought this might be £40k all-in. That proved to be a wild underestimation that didn't even factor in a lot of stuff (floor, worktop, lighting, table, shelves)... and then during the process I needed to overhaul my roof, overhaul my sash windows, repair the old boiler (just to see it through 2 more months before it was ripped out)... and today my grand total spent on the kitchen + building works is £74-75k.

For not paying attention at all to cost (I kept track of spending, but I didn't let that influence the next decision which would be made with "do the job right" and high quality regardless of the current spend)... I have come unnervingly close to fully emptying the bank and going onto credit card.

A rough breakdown:

• Kitchen = £60k
  
• Hall and bathroom = £3k
  
• Roof = £3.7k
  
• Windows = £3k
  
• Boiler repair = £1k
  
• Table and chairs for the kitchen = £4k
  
  

Additional works identified during all of this:

• Repointing the entire house
  
• Down pipe on rear needs replacing
  
  

What I would've got for this... 15+ years of very low maintenance and very high quality living within this house. Probably even longer than that, but high confidence that there won't be surprises for a long while.

This house did surprise me... it looked great when viewed and purchased, but slowly revealed how much of that covered a conscious neglect over the past 20 years by multiple owners. The huge shock was just how bad the electrics were, which was the thing that triggered the start of me looking at how to fix it all.

I've probably spent about £30k excessively on pure quality choices... and would've had to spend around £40k on just doing what was needed even if I had chosen cheap appliances and an Ikea kitchen. The kitchen itself wasn't the job, it was the building required... which forced the kitchen to be fully renovated.

The builder I used... wow, would 100% use again. I have no compliants at all, only praise for every detail, the communication, the tidying every day... everything.

The kitchen company I used... I agree the cabinets are nice... but are they as nice as the money suggests? Unsure. Also it's been pretty stressful, I've needed to chase everything from them and they frequently seem to lose track of my in-writing email replies with clear and quickly made decisions. I've barely changed any decision, I had originally spec'd an additional cabinet but these were just taken out... the core layout wasn't modified at all. So... for a "this is the plan" and every decision by me committed to within 24 hours... there was a hell of a lot of delay, forgotten details, and miscommunication.

In time I'll see if my view of the kitchen company improves (when I live with the kitchen itself)... but right now I'd say the communication mismatches and their lack of being on top of things has made this one part hugely stressful.

We had exactly the same thing when we bought our house - the place looked in good condition, clean but was a bit soulless.

We realised that it had been cheaply renovated 15 years ago and flipped, and the subsequent owner hadn't spent a penny on it since.

It looked fine on the surface but underneath everything was slowly falling apart.

I think we've fixed the issues but it's cost a lot more than we expected to get it to a happy state.

We were chatting to our electrician yesterday and he said to go from really good standard (our build) to perfect everything you have to massively increase not only the costs, but also the time a project takes.

I was actually lucky with the electrics in that I could go through the loft.

If I couldn't have done that, the final bill would've included removing the block board floor, the oak floor under that, and sending the electrics that way. This would've bumped the price and time so much that it would've been a whole house job requiring me to move out.

I'm also lucky in that I worked this through with the builder in advance, identified everything likely to need doing and included them in the project. If I hadn't done that, the project would've scope creeped to include them anyway through a series of discoveries once the kitchen was gutted.

Jesus - £75,000?!!
Will it put that much value on your property if you were to sell it?

In retrospect I would have loved to just do the kitchen extension and concentrate on that. Doing the bathroom, windows, new front door and locks, putting in a downstairs toilet and reflooring the whole house just made my head explode with details.

I've never had sleepless nights worrying about things until the last few weeks. Probably a combination of the stress and no ability to exercise apart from walking.

Anyway, almost there. Will be in there in one weeks time!

Will it put that much value on your property if you were to sell it?

By chance... yes.

Flats on this road are in the £675-700k range, I paid £610k which factored in some of the work needed and some panic selling by the sellers as two previous buyers had dropped out (one failed to get the funds, the other pulled out around the surveyors stage so I assume they identified a lot of the work).

What I've spent puts this into the range of the other flats in this area, but the quality of the work all round probably push it to the top or just above the top of the local range.

So yes... I do think that all that I've spent is already reflected in the house price.

If I'd gone another £10k... that probably wouldn't be true. For where I am today it's probably true.

And more importantly you've got a great finish that you can enjoy for years to come, with no cut corners to come back to bite you.

Once you start spending there's no point stopping IMO. Just get the job done well and then enjoy the space while you work hard to pay for it.

Once you start spending there's no pint stopping IMO.

Why are we suddenly talking about hippy in the pub?

The huge shock was just how bad the electrics were

That bad eh?

today my grand total spent on the kitchen + building works is £74-75k.

Fuck me, I hope you like cooking. That buys a lot of Deliveroo.

think how many 11sp chains you could get for that fs

We need updates @Velocio

£74-75k

I'm half "how much omg wtf lol" and half "yeah I can totally see how that could happen".

Everything is in statis... and I've been busy with work this week.

But... this morning things changed, the final pieces to the kitchen arrived (drawer inserts, cabinet door over washing machine, cabinet doors for the chimney breast cupboard)... so these will go in next week, and worktop is currently on schedule for next Thursday.

Take a note/photo of what the installer uses to fill/seal any worktop joints. They mixed three tubes of Colorfill to get the correct colour when they installed ours. Worth knowing what they used, and rough proportions, incase you need to fill/redo a small section in future.

I think the expenditure is totally reasonable for the property and the apparent quality of the finish.

My only thought was whether it would be worth spending an extra £2k to replace the uPVC kitchen window with a nice timber sash job?

I second this - our installer said he only uses white silicone, unless the client provides another suitable silicone for him.

Ours was bright white and really sticks out, fortunately the fabricator has to come back on Tuesday to sort a minor issue and he said he's happy to redo all the siliconing with the one I bought yesterday.

My only thought was whether it would be worth spending an extra £2k to replace the uPVC kitchen window with a nice timber sash job?

Probably... and thankfully I can do this later. None of the upstand, cabinetry or anything touches the kitchen window above the sink so doing this later can be made good and tidied up relatively easily.

I did consider including it... and even of modernising the skylight. But both felt a stretch too far once I saw how much I was committing to elsewhere and the roof and existing sash windows needed their overhaul to.

Drama on the kitchen front... Harvey Jones have discovered that their supply chains are impacted and so I don't yet have any handles!

I've begun to see if I can source my own, 5 cups and 13 knobs... In something like a brushed steel or brass.

Thankfully Armac Martin https://www.armacmartin.co.uk/ are receptive to making some of their Cotswold range for me, and are going to find out the lead time for this.

But still... Kinda annoyed by HJ for continued communication issues and easily avoidable issues. From October I've been saying that I wanted everything onsite or in the warehouse by end of December to avoid a covid + Brexit logistics issue... And here we are with their usual supply chains failing to source final fittings at short notice - entirely predictable.

May have to do the fittings myself once everything else is complete. Life is hard, first world problems,etc.