Kitchen project¶
On of the current _projects_ I’m working on is to replace a kitchen in an apartment with a newer, nicer one. A little bit more modern would be good.
One part will be getting rid of the old one (which is still in place), the second part will be planing and buying the new one and the third part will be actually getting it installed.
Getting the current one out of the room and making space for a replacement is boring. That’s why I’m starting with the more interesting second part: Planing.
While I use a kitchen every day, I never spent much time actually thinking about what a kitchen is and what’s going on there behind the surface. It all looks like just a couple of closets to me, a fridge and an oven - put it somehow together and it will work as a kitchen.
Then there is the price. A common kitchen can range from 40.000 to 75.000, depending on the design and size. Choosing cheap appliances can surely get your prices down. But maybe that’s not what you want since you’re using them almost every day and you want some that are easy to maintain and will not break after the first five pizza.
But in order to get to a more structural level: how to plan a kitchen? How to figure out what you actually need and what you don’t? What parts can you do on your own, which one you shouldn’t and which one you should in order to save some money?
That’s why the job of a kitchen consultant has been invented. This kind of people are sitting in the kitchen shops, ready for customers to query and eager to bring their expertise into action. They should know their product line, the possibilities they have and not be afraid of speaking their mind when you think it’s a good idea to put the fridge on top of the oven. Kind of a crossing between designer and engineer.
So we went to a couple of kitchen stores to see what’s possible, find out what we want and how much of a heart-stroke it will cost.
HTH¶
One local kitchen supplier. I always though of HTH as quite expensive, based on the commercials, but I’ve got corrected. The level of service is quite high. So is the price. Considering that they produce all elements rights when ordered just for this kitchen, it reflects in the work that’s needed to manufacture the parts.
On a second product line they have a cheaper, modular series of kitchens which come with a faster delivery line, less choices of course and the possibility to do it all by yourself in order to safe money (if you want/have to). That’s the product line we’re going for.
During an hour you’re sitting together with the consultant and talk through the different possibilities that are available. Then everything is gonna be put in a drawing for you and you’ll get an offer. Easy and it doesn’t cost you more than roughly two hours.
In addition: When you’re planing to sell you apartment after a while the selling price profits from not having one of the cheaper ones of the other competitors.
Elkjøp¶
This supplier is mainly specialised on electronics and is now doing in kitchen as well. Or they want to.
The whole story took about 10 minutes for us. We went into a store, had a look at the two kitchens available for demonstration, nodded our heads and left. Despite that they might sell a good quality, the rest of the atmosphere in the electronic shop seems to kill the kitchen sale - or to have a negative influence at it at least.
Ikea¶
The kitchens of Ikea are well known, to say the least. Everybody probably knows somebody how has bought one if not himself. The price range is usually lower than anyone else and more than competing. All kitchens are alike, but you can choose from a good range of colors, surfaces, doors, etc., etc., etc. to _design_ the kitchen that comes closest to your dreams. A fast delivery time (if not on the same day) makes it the first choice for many.
The low price is realized by a high level of standardized modules and shifting most of the work over to the customer. A consultant is hard to find to get you started.
They provide some feasible solutions and some which are crap (because they are unstable and will most likely not survive the first year, if the transport at all). As soon as you choose appliances o a higher quality.
After having a look at the several model kitchens Ikea has set up you’re asked to draw your own kitchen yourself. They provide an application for that; either on their webside or in their stores. After you’ve finished drawing you can ask one of the employees of the department to crosscheck that you’ve got everything and to make suggestions.
I’m not new to computers and strange applications and I had big hope for the application they provide. Hell, I got disappointed. The _Design_-application is running to slow and doesn’t really respond to the user input. You can see the effort that has been put in to make it as user friendly as possible, but the pure wide range of different appliances and furniture you can apply let you easily spend you three or more hours to draw a small room that’s supposed to be your kitchen. I quit after 15 min. in agony of the application. Let me tell you: I wouldn’t have taken it for free. The performance on the local machines in the store is the same you have on their website. Creating a draft for you kitchen is not fun.
There would have been probably a workaround for this, but in addition the available colors you can choose your fronts from, weren’t really our taste.
Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to not go here first, so I didn’t get spoiled by the other suppliers consultant.
Kvik¶
Kvik is following more or less the same strategy as HTH is: High end and a cheaper alternative. Naturally most products are quite similar to the competitor, but there are difference in questions of details.
We’ll have our hour with their consultant next week and see what’s falling out at the end of the process. Solution- and price-wise.
Update¶
We’ve been to Kvik and it’s basically the same as at HTH. Well, the coffee is much better actually. Their solutions are equality good as the ones from HTH, the white goods seem to be a bit more expensive. Well, it’s all Siemens, that might explain the higher prices. After now spending more time on finding out what we actually want and having measured the room in the meantime, Kvik really benefited from our preparation. While we’re waiting for the detailed offer, we will also meet once more with HTH in oder to change the current offer and design. That will make the offers more comparable as well. And in the end it all comes down to the price.
Update (2013-06-06)¶
The final decision have been made. As mentioned earlier, Kvik kicked themselves out of the competition due to the high prices for the white goods.
Somehow _Ikea_ made it back into the contest. In total their offer was about 10k under the competing offer from HTH, but was missing some small pieces which we’ve calculated with 3-5k. The basic kitchen came up to the same price. The white goods - from a different brand - were significantly cheaper. This almost gave the missing kick towards taking their offer; until I had a closer look at the specs of the electronics:
Compared to the other offer, almost all electronics (I’ve only compare the fridge and the Oven) had weaker/lower specifications. For example: Fridge Ikea: 161l, Fridge HTH: 210l. This if of course quite an extreme difference, but even within the details, the cheaper white goods got outperformed in almost every way when compared with the competitor. Considering the same basic price for the wooden stuff, it’s at least the electrics I’d like to have as good as possible and not the cheapest one. If you do it once, do it right. So you can guess which offer we took.
Based on the service we got, the communication via email and telephone and due to the price and value of the goods within the offer it went to HTH.
Now let’s hope that we get it in place that smooth as well.
The next steps after delivery will be
Moving the water-tank
Moving the electrics
Screwing the kitchen together.
Update (2013-07-09)¶
Nearly 75% of the kitchen has been set up already. There are small nots and stuff missing, but mainly it’s functional. Water is running, power is coming tomorrow.
Almost everything has been delivered correctly from HTH. We might have missed to order the water crane, but that got quickly fixed by HTH. Most of the parts made actually sense and we quickly knew where to put them. Some parts we delivered already back to origin; unopened parts can be easily returned. While building we found out that we had 10cm more than we thought and switched one locker against a wider one, no problem from HTH and we got the new one withing 45 minutes.