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Evening Standard

Business

Kate Jacobs

Kitchen renovation guide: everything you need to know from London suppliers to budget and low-waste options

IKEA London eBay FSC John Lewis

The kitchen is the hard-working heart of the home, often the scene of everything from meals to homework and socialising.

So a tired or dated space can put a bit of a damper on domestic life.

That said, ripping out and starting afresh can be both prohibitively expensive and seriously irresponsible from an environmental perspective, even if it often seems like the only option on offer from the mainstream kitchen suppliers.

There are ways to revamp your kitchen, whether through high-impact tweaks or bigger changes. And if your kitchen is unsalvageable, you can make a full renovation as sustainable as possible.

First things first: spend a little time hanging out in your kitchen, perhaps with a brutally honest friend.

Consider what works about the space and what doesn’t.

“If it’s a superficial issue, perhaps you can give it a glow-up, changing colours, a new splashback, looking at what storage is essential — can you rationalise some of your stuff and therefore replace some cupboards with shelves or have a little move-around of any freestanding furniture,” says Leila Touwen of kitchen company Pluck.

Personalising the high street

Replacing the doors can put a spin on a high street kitchen (Plykea)

To make a start in comparing the high-street kitchen brands including Ikea, B&Q, John Lewis, Magnet and more, there’s comparison site kitchen-compare.com.

Ikea kitchens start at about £675 based on a typical eight-cabinet layout. This price includes kitchen cabinets, drawers, doors, worktop, sink and taps but not appliances, lighting or handles, etc.

For maximum transformative impact without a whole new kitchen, replacement doors are the obvious way to go.

In the past few years, there has been a major upswing in companies such as Naked, Plykea and Milk that will make new doors for either an old kitchen or to put a more stylish spin on new carcasses from one of the affordable high-street giants.

“If there is a possibility that a project could reuse parts of an existing kitchen, we visit in person to assess the existing cabinets.

"Often hinges and drawer runners need replacing, but the cabinets themselves might be reusable. We make all our top-quality doors and panels completely bespoke, so we can make them to work with the dimensions of existing units,” says David Di Duca of Milk Furniture.

Milk estimates that a set of bespoke doors and panels to refurbish an existing kitchen would likely cost from about £4,000 to supply excluding site work.

“Their kitchen storage organisers and accessories are carefully considered, allowing you to adapt the kitchen to your needs. If the fronts need a refresh or aren’t to your taste then consider customising what you have," she adds.

"An existing Ikea kitchen can be elevated with Plykea fronts for an instant upgrade. We can also make non-standard sized doors or odd-shaped cover panels because we create each item to order in-house at our workshop in east London, making it easy to accommodate any unusual requests.”

There are lots of sustainable materials out there that work well for kitchen doors, such as Valchromat, an engineered wood fibre panel made from recycled wood chips. Designed for high physical performance, it comes in a wide range of colours that run through the material and has an interesting grain-like texture.

Richlite is another option that flexes its eco-credentials. Durable and sustainable, it’s an FSC-certified material made using post-consumer recycled paper.

A Husk kitchen in Tooting featuring Ikea units with FSC certified oak fronts (Studio Werc / HUSK)

Cheaper than new doors

With or without new cabinet doors, new knobs or handles can make a big difference. Go for something bold and graphic that will grab the attention —Plank Hardware, Swarf Hardware and Dust Shack are all stylish independents operating in this area, and all are hot on sustainability, too.

If new kitchen doors are too much of a stretch, consider replacing them with simple curtains, attached with a curtain wire, used with hooks and eyes (from John Lewis).

Patterned fabrics can be more forgiving in food prep areas; consider wholesome gingham or a graphic stripe, or go light and airy with café curtains — East London Cloth is the go-to for this.

If you’re handy with a sewing machine, decorators’ cotton twill dust sheets are a great ultra-low-budget fabric option.

Paint is always transformative and while redecorating the walls provides an easy refresh (paint the ceiling in the same shade for a smarter, more cohesive look), kitchen cabinet doors can be painted, too.

Lots of companies offer this service, or go it alone with a light sanding, a good primer (interior designer Rhonda Drakeford recommends Tikkurila Otex High-Performance Adhesion Primer Undercoat for everything from uPVC window frames to wood to tiles) followed by your choice of paint, such as Little Greene’s Intelligent Satinwood.

Tiling

Tiles can be painted in the same way, or jazzed up with a pop of coloured grout, an easy way to refresh the room when dodgy, discoloured grouting is letting it down.

Plykea and Milk Furniture both suggest using cheap, square white tiles with a coloured grout for a graphic grid effect. Kerakoll and Mapei are the names to know for a wide range of grout colours.

Tiles like this make an affordable worktop option, too, or if you’re shopping for worktops on a tight budget, Milk Furniture suggests to “choose something simple — plain white worktops can look minimal and very classy when combined with colour or texture on the doors, for example.”

For a quick fix, particularly in a long-term rental, think about a kitchen worktop overlay that is placed over the old countertop with minimal disruption. Granite Transformations has a range of recycled glass overlays with a good choice of colours.

Vintage and freestanding elements can add more storage space sustainably (Pluck)

If the budget allows, many kitchen experts advise that the worktop is a key element to invest in.

“Allocate more budget to elements that are harder to reuse, recycle or resell, such as fronts and worktops. These components play a pivotal role in the overall aesthetics and functionality of the kitchen, and investing wisely in them ensures a longer lifespan for your kitchen elements,” suggests Fiona Ginnett of kitchen company Hølte.

The company’s minimum order is £3,000 plus VAT but most kitchens start from £7,700 including VAT but not install, assuming Ikea cabinets, Hølte fronts, handles and worktops for a small, one-run kitchen.

Re-use

Consider shopping second hand to keep costs down and add character (Pluck)

Re-using is one of the simplest and most sustainable approaches to updating your kitchen, so think about adding some vintage, freestanding elements if you need more work surface or storage space.

“If you can’t afford completely new cabinetry and furniture, think creatively — browse flea markets, antique shops and online auction sites like eBay for affordable pieces.

“At Pluck we are advocates of combining old and new, it brings character and history to a room. If you can afford a run of custom cupboards for your kitchen, why not combine this with your flea market finds?” says Touwen.

Pluck’s kitchen cabinetry starts at £20,000 including VAT and delivery but not installation, worktops or appliances. The average London project costs £32,000.

To offset this outlay, consider topping an old oak chest of drawers or cupboard with a marble off-cut from the local stone yard.

Chunky castors will give such pieces extra flexibility so they can be easily reconfigured when you have friends over. Or look for tall Fifties “kitchenette” cabinets that often have a handy fold-out shelf at worktop height.

Try local second-hand shops, Preloved, Gumtree, Facebook Marketplace or eBay (searching by “nearest first”), and consider placing wanted ads on local forums.

Starting from scratch

If you need a brand new kitchen, try to rehome your old one (Pluck)

Sometimes, though, a kitchen just can’t be salvaged and needs to be created from scratch.

If you have any old kitchen elements to get rid of before you begin, think of landfill as the last resort and look to rehome everything first on local sites like Preloved and Freecycle.

The most sustainable option is to re-use a second-hand kitchen: The Used Kitchen Company, Used Kitchen Hub and Love My Kitchen are great places to start, while rehome.co.uk sells ex-display items.

It’s also crucial not to get carried away with lavish plans, especially when vast, open-plan kitchens often require expensive RSJs (rolled steel joists) to hold everything in place.

At the planning stage it’s good to work out where you’ll save and where you’ll invest, advises Hølte. “Prioritise investment in design as it forms the foundation of sustainability,” says Ginnett.

“A well-conceived layout and high-quality products are less likely to require replacement. A thoughtful design approach ensures longevity and reduces the need for frequent renovations.”

Appliances often account for a large chunk of your budget (Hølte)

Whenever there’s a budget constraint on a kitchen project, using more affordable high-street carcasses is almost invariably the way to go.

A lot of contractors prefer Howdens as it’s ready-made (although it’s a fairly open secret that builders often charge a mark-up, even though they get their client a discount on the retail price. Howden’s have said “if and how” its trade customers discloses the discount to clients “is for them to decide”).

Many people favour Ikea because of the huge variety of configurations that can be tailored and updated to match every kitchen storage need. Unsurprisingly Ikea carcasses arrive flat-packed but, with a little time, space and basic skills, they can be self-assembled, taking money off the contractor’s bill.

Buying appliances

It’s important not to get carried away when it comes to appliances, too, as Dave Young of kitchen company Husk advises.

“Appliances make up a large percentage of your budget if buying new so do the research and invest only when you think it makes sense to. Do you really need 20 different oven functions?”

Remember that there are bargain appliances to be had through companies like H2O Appliances and Appliances Direct, which sell fully refurbished models.

Milk Furniture urges anyone planning a kitchen to keep an eye on the nuts and bolts of the design.

“There are a lot of gimmicks in the market for kitchen storage, but complex mechanisms are likely to wear out or break eventually,” says Di Duca.

“Top-quality hinges and drawer runners are an excellent investment however, they will last longer, contribute a lot to the quality feel and increase the lifespan of the whole kitchen as a result.

“The truth is that we look after the things we love, and therefore they last longer. So, getting a kitchen you’re proud of is a big part of making it last longer and therefore being a more sustainable investment.”