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tawny owl



Joined: 29 Apr 2005
Posts: 563
Location: Hampshire
PostPosted: Thu Dec 01, 05 12:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

bernie wrote:
A bit of an update - popped into B&Q late yesterday afternoon and the design man came out at 5.30. He has quoted us �6300 for the kitchen of which �2800 is fitting


Ouch! That sounds very expensive. If he's given you a plan, try pricing it up yourself with some other shops rather than getting a salesman in. Don't use their fitters - you should be able to find a decent carpenter through personal recommendation to do that. It's only a flatpack, for goodness sake!

tawny owl



Joined: 29 Apr 2005
Posts: 563
Location: Hampshire
PostPosted: Thu Dec 01, 05 12:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

nettie wrote:
When I do up my kitchen i'm going to dispense with the wall mounted eye level units altogether and have some of those nice tubular steel shelves and rails from Ikea, the ones that you can hang things from, and mounted at a shorta*se-friendly height.


In theory, that's a nice idea. In practice, unless you use the stuff on the shelves all the time, you will end up having to clean that nasty black sticky mixture of dust and grease that gets on the top of cupboards in pretty much any kitchen (unless it's not used for cooking) off everything on the shelves, and it's a much worse job than cleaning the tops of cupboards. If you don't like the solid look of cupboards, you could put glass doors on, and there's nothing to stop you mounting them a bit lower down.

tawny owl



Joined: 29 Apr 2005
Posts: 563
Location: Hampshire
PostPosted: Thu Dec 01, 05 12:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

[quote="Bugs"]
nettie wrote:
only to now discover that no other place sells doors to fit 'em. And while Ikea is famous for "paint your own" wood stuff, do they do unfinished cupboard doors? Go on, guess. So we've either got to wait till we settle for another one from their range or til TD has time to make some Till then it's an open plan easy access look....


Couldn't you get some place like Just Doors to make them? Or a handy carpenter?

Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator


Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism
PostPosted: Thu Dec 01, 05 12:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

tawny owl wrote:
Couldn't you get some place like Just Doors to make them? Or a handy carpenter?


All we want is wooded, i.e. cheap pine, shaker style doors that we can paint. Having a good look at the various offers it would be cheaper to get the solid birch doors from IKEA and either keep them as they are or paint them than it would be to buy MDF doors from some of these door companies.

As for making them, it doesn't seem like we would save too much this way and then there's the time.

wellington womble



Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 15051
Location: East Midlands
PostPosted: Thu Dec 01, 05 6:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

tawny owl wrote:
and there's nothing to stop you mounting them a bit lower down.


Yes, there is - things won't fit underneath them! Mind you, if your one of us (ie a shortar*e!) you could always mount the worktops lower down too.

Ri

Bernie66



Joined: 14 Jan 2005
Posts: 13967
Location: Eastoft
PostPosted: Thu Dec 01, 05 9:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Most kitchen carcasses come with legs approx six inches long and adjustable to take up any slight uneveness of the floor. If you need to set the whole thing lower then the legs can be disposed of. The only concern with doing that is that the carcasses will pretty soon blow if they get wet. Shorter legs, say 1.5 inch long could easily be fashioned out of hardwood/etc to lower the whole kitchen by a required amount. Then the wortops would be lower, hence even if the standard gap between worktop and wall units is adhered to the wall units would obviously be lower.
If you are clever and plan well the space which is usually wasted ontop of the wall units and decorated with cornice can be utilised by using say 300/400mm doors(Dependiong on the height of your ceiling) turned sideways as fronts for extra, seldom used storage space on the condition you choose a design which has relatively plain fascias so turning through 90 degrees will not look out of place. If storage space is at a premium it is worth considering.

tawny owl



Joined: 29 Apr 2005
Posts: 563
Location: Hampshire
PostPosted: Fri Dec 02, 05 2:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

I think Ikea do a choice of leg heights.

ejc-free



Joined: 19 Jan 2005
Posts: 117
Location: Near to Cerizay in la Belle France
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 05 2:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Swoping with friends can also work well - we bought a " job lot" of slate tiles for our kitchen floor - we had too many for our needs - so swapped our spares with a friend who made me the most gorgious oak butchers block type table to my design for my height (I'm only 5'4") with a rack underneath for bottles etc and hamgers for my towels / team towels - we were both really pleased with our trade.

I also have re-used the wooden work surface piece cut-out for our sink to be fitted as another wooden chopping block - we just got the carpenter to round the ends off for us.

bernie-woman



Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 7824
Location: shropshire
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 05 3:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Well we are all ready to order the kitchen - just waiting for the time to be right (i.e sale time )

Now onto the job of finding someone to fit it and finding a builder for the extension

wellington womble



Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 15051
Location: East Midlands
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 05 8:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Good idea about the cupboards - could probably use drawer fronts, if you vould get a carpenter (ie a proper one!) to put hinges on the bottom, so they flap down. Bugger. wish I'd thought of that.

Bernie66



Joined: 14 Jan 2005
Posts: 13967
Location: Eastoft
PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 05 9:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

bernie wrote:
Well we are all ready to order the kitchen - just waiting for the time to be right (i.e sale time )

Now onto the job of finding someone to fit it and finding a builder for the extension


Sale starts Boxing Day usually

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