How do I bathroom / kitchen / extension? etc.

I guess my question is; how do I kitchen?

1. Acquire £40k
   
2. ?
   

.3. profit

"Should I get a kitchen fitter in first to survey it all??”

get a free survey from the likes of Wren etc, they look at the services and do you a 3D render. if you get a good a planner they come into their own by knowing what can and can’t be done and suggest solutions you would not have thought of.

I know Wren have a bad rep but the designer I used was great and we spent ages at an instore appointment tweaking the design for a tricky space and phoned the fitter to run though a few points and confirm what would work.

1. Acquire £40k
   
2. Order gold taps
   

I measured mine all up and ordered it online. Magnet and wickes come out and measure but you will pay a bit more for it.

The kitchen units, island and worktop and appliances for this came to about 8k with a lot of shopping around.

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Decent size space.
This is useful.
Unless anyone knows otherwise I'd say most kitchen cabinets are the same - slightly crap chipboard (as per my Ikea ones) so price difference is usually down to service (unless you are going 40k kitchen, which I assume you are, and if so, do not bother reading on).
An independent fitter will be cheaper than John Lewis etc but run the risk of being cowboys and having to recourse if so.
Plumbing wise, looks like everything is window end so if you want to keep it simple keep the sink down there (best place for it IMO - looking out a window).
If you want to do semi custom, a few companies do nicer doors for Ikea stuff.

P.S. have I mentioned home.by.me before?

This is the forum favourite Worktop Express’ other business.

Probably fast grown [Russian?] oak but oak cabinets nonetheless. They were excellent in my previous house and not more expensive than wickes et al

2 - Consider black taps.
3 - forum argument on limescale marks.
4 - order gold taps

Rep gold taps.

Ignore my god tier slippers.

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Nice tap. Mine has tiny feed lines and with a gravity fed system I get really poor output.

didn't know Purina made taps!

on taps, shower etc, are black ones a bad idea? i need some bullet points in case they come up in conversations of “what i want in the bathroom”
personally i’m not a fan and would go for brushed/satin stainless.

think there's generally two camps:

• it'll age badly, 'look very 2010s' etc.
  
• in hard water areas it'll show up limescale more
  
  

i reckon both of those can be mitigated relatively easily, so wouldn't deter me if black suited what i was going for

1. Buy random laboratory doors off ebay
   
2. Get significant other to build kitchen around them
   
3. Love it so much that when we got the floor replaced 10 years later we asked the builders to remove and reinstall our frankenkitchen instead of making it an excuse to buy a new one
   

I like it

You beat me to it!

Decided the £10K for built in wardrobes and recessed shelving was way out of budget and decided to give it a go myself.

I had an initial idea on layout which was quickly blown out the water by the cost and then learning the building regs around partition walls. This seems quite laughable now

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Given we wanted wardrobes on a budget the Pax units seemed to be the smart way to go. In the end we decided removing the old tank room was going to be a mistake so this'll be repurposed for hallways storage.

New layout

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And here's the starting point

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The kitchen units, island and worktop and appliances for this came to about 8k

Leaving £32k to spend on downlights.

First attempt at demolition was a messy job, learned the long way that cutting old pb neatly would make clean up/disposal significantly easier. Still, swinging a crow bar and hammer was fun for a day

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To be fair they don't actually give off much light. I don't really like having them on.

Not sure why images above are back to front but pulled a lot of stuff out and was able to reuse a lot of the timbers (much nicer than the crap i got from Wickes). As it turned out this was lucky as i hadn't ordered enough of the new stuff. Anyway what i hadn't planned for were sinking floor boards and not a single right angle in sight. Took a good day or two getting things level and lined up and i put down plinths under the cupboards to resolve the floor issues.

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Pulled some cable from the loft through the studs for the mirror light and added some new sockets into the "alcoves" off the existing ring. Pax units were a doddle and just need fixing back to centre and level them. A lot more work than i imagined but given this is my first stab at this (albeit with some more experienced help) i'm pretty pleased with where i have got to

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