Share your kitchen renovation experience. Looking at Freedom versus more custom

[Taurean]

We did a Bunnings kitchen in my parents house for around $13k complete with an engineered stone bench top and a beautiful 900mm cooktop and oven. Dad and DH installed it al themselves though. Will see if I can find a pic in the morning.

Laminex Group offer Essa Stone now which is a lovely engineered stone at a reasonable price. We used Laminex Freestyle in the first house we built (in our kitchen and bathrooms) and it looked fantastic. We had a glass splash back in our kitchen which was so expensive so in the house we are building at the moment, we are using rectified tiles for our splash back instead. Much cheaper and still a lovely, contemporary look. Dad tiled the splash back in their kitchen too.

A friend from my mums group has just renovated their kitchen and they did granite overlay bench tops. Looks fab and is well priced for a 'stone' bench top.

[Amy_jellybean]

I thought I would pop in here because we are just about to do ours in the house we are rennovating. We are doing an Ikea kitchen and went in and had everything costed the other day. Below is details of ours:

Our kitchen is quite large so keep this in mind with pricing.
It is 3.68m wide and 4.11m long.

It is a large L shape with an island bench in the middle. We have 5x 60cm draw units each with 3 draws in it, 2x 80cm draw units with 3 draws in it, a large draw under the sink for waste, high cabinet (pantry) with pull out baskets and draws, sink, taps, corner cupboard with pull out swivel thing (dont know the technical name hahaha), a cabinet with 2x large pot draw and then the over and microwave are above that and then a high cupboard above that, doors handles, kickboards etc as well. We also have 2x 80cm and 2x 60cm wall cupboards. The island bench is double sided so both sides on it have draws for storing tupperware etc. All of this is done in gloss grey and costing $7993.

We are choosing to put stone bench tops in which Ikea make to size. The 20cm depth one is $4095 or the 40cm depth is $4755.

Ikea have 2 different types of splashbacks to choose from either glass which in our case is $3006 (it is huge though!) or another sort of Metal material which is $1382.

If you decide that you want to do an ikea kitchen then make sure you go in on a week day not a weekend! That way its not as busy and you cant speak to someone about what you want.

I hope this helps x


We then have the choice between a

[Artechim]

We installed an Ikea kitchen, it was easy and looked really nice. We were converting from a bad lay out to a galley one though, so nothing fancy needed doing - just lining cabinets along two walls. We did it in a weekend and I was 8.5 months pregnant at the time so it must not have been too hard. I think it was around 3K, including electrical because we needed to move the oven.

Kelly, ikea do a laminate bench top in two different lengths. You can do your own angled join to make them into an L if you or your partner is even reasonably handy. Or I think you can pay for them to install the bench top, it still works out cheaper than a joiner.

[Now we're 3]

Hey Taurean what is/are rectified tiles? We are finalising our new kitchen design at present and are leaning towards tiles rather than glass spashbacks. Because of the shape of our kitchen I think glass will work out to be horrendously expensive and would need to go from worktop/hob to ceiling so would be large area to have as glass.

Arcadia we are going custom. Love the fact that is will be made to fit and being honest has come in quoted as less than the Freedom type quotes. We didn't get them to quote but had used a kitchen wholesale who operate in the same way .......... will see what my boss can do let me phone him, offer only good for tonight blah blah blah. Just felt as though she was quoting towards the $ amount we had said we had in our budget rather than asking us what we wanted giving quote for that and then negotiating as to what we need to drop or change to meet our price. Would totally recommend the guy we are dealing with but we're in Sydney so wouldn't work for you.

[Taurean]

Hopefully this pic works. This is a Bunnings kit kitchen, installed by my dad and DH. The benchtop was ordered through Bunnings too but installed by professionals. It a very similar product to Freestyle (by Laminex, a resin based, stone look-alike) and it looks brilliant.

Unfortunately the batch of white cabinets we got have an issue with discolouration but Bunnings are aware of it and we're currently in the process of getting it replaced, at no charge of course. I wouldn't not recommend them based on that though, especially as they have many other colours to choose from too.

Dad did the tiling for the splash back. It was a cheap and effective alternative to glass. We are putting tiles (rectified tiles) in as our splash back in the house we are currently building too. We had glass in the last house we built which looked lovely but it is pricey.

Bunnings Kitchen.jpg

[Arcadia]

Thanks for the replies everyone. It's very helpful.