Replace Kitchen OR add to old kitchen?

hughm

We have a 4 1/2 year old Cream Shaker Kitchen with Solid Beech counter tops. It was not a cheap kitchen at the time but it is looking a bit grubby now. The kitchen is not large hence the Cream units as opposed to Cherry or other dark woods.

We recently extended out the back of the house and this affected the kitchen. Part of our counter space/cabinets are gone to make way for a new arch and we have an existing corner of the kitchen which we used for a table and chairs that we now want to use for additional counter space and cabinets into to make up for the loss elsewhere.

We had a kitchen guy (whom we had used before for other work) booked 2 months ago but he has let us down at the very last minute.:mad:

We have 2 options now
1- find a new kitchen guy or company who is prepared to match up our existing units and supply and fit within our budget OR
2- redo the kitchen from scratch with a reasonably cheap kitchen:eek: from cash and carry or the like.

Any thoughts or advice.

beldin

Would it be possible to get just new carcasses for the new part and replace all the doors so that they would all look the same.
It might be hard to get doors to match your old ones as there probably would have been some fading, but if you replaced all the doors everything would match better.
Changing doors is usually quite easy if they have the hinge slots pre drilled.

hughm

Hi beldin, that's not a bad idea.

Do you know what proportion of the overall cost of a kitchen is made up of the carcasses.

The only problem however with that is that we would also need to replace our end units and all of our wall display units and our extractor as they all carry the current design and colour. Our extractor unit alone cost about €600! (without the actual extractor)

The only way to do what you are suggesting would be to replace all the drawers and doors with a new Cream Shaker set that is of a similar design and pretty much the exact same colour. That way the wall units and extractor could all stay or go as we see fit. Perhaps that is what you meant.

FX Meister

Surely the extractor is just a matter of changing the panel also?

hughm

FX Meister wrote:

Surely the extractor is just a matter of changing the panel also?

No I'm afraid not, it's a large extractor hood Unit itself. It's a feature. It is also cream. If we removed it it would also measn retiling around the replacement etc.

It needs to stay unless we cempletely change the kitchen.

beldin

It would be probably best to keep as much as possible. Replacing the cream shaker doors with a simialr style would be the best option. That is unless you really want to change.
Carcasses are relatively cheap. We got a kitchen from In-house and the base units worked out at approx 70 -90 euros each for the carcasses.
Doors can be different depending on whether they are solid wood or not. They usually work out more expensive than the carcasses.
Finally the only other thing to match are end panels and plinths on the units which could be difficult but you can always go with something different. we have one wall with all cream units and at the other side something like what you want we have cream doors with a dark timber surround somthing on this style.
http://www.in-house.ie/product_details.asp?pro_id=157&cat=1&subcat=1

GreeBo

hughm wrote:

Hi beldin, that's not a bad idea.

Do you know what proportion of the overall cost of a kitchen is made up of the carcasses.

Its usually about 50-50, with the doors possibly being slightly more expensive.

hughm wrote:

The only problem however with that is that we would also need to replace our end units and all of our wall display units and our extractor as they all carry the current design and colour. Our extractor unit alone cost about €600! (without the actual extractor)

Assuming that there is nothing majorly fancy about you existing end units/extractor you can still probably do it.
They make "fronts" whether doors or otherwise to cover everything nowadays.