Kitchen

What is a ballpark figure for how much a Kit Stone fitted kitchen will cost me?

It may surprise you to know that our average fitted kitchen sale is £8500, this does not however include worktops or fitting. Kitchen worktops would be in the region of £2000 and an average fit takes 2 fitters 2-3 days, therefore, we would hope no more than £1500. This brings the average Kit Stone fitted kitchen to about £12000 fully fitted, which is approximately 50% less than the average ‘big name’ brand of similar quality.

How do you manage to keep what seams to be a handmade solid wood kitchen so reasonably priced?

The raw material costs in most kitchens within our sector of the market are ostensibly the same. Our style and quality of kitchen from one of the big names will cost you in the region of £30K plus. Most of this price difference is down to overheads, at Kit Stone we don’t take out full page adverts in the glossy magazines and you won’t be visited by a sales designer in a top of the range car. We try to pass on these cost savings to you, the customer, but you will need to ‘buy into’ this philosophy with us and do a little bit of leg work yourself. If you are paying £30K plus for your kitchen you can expect to sit back and watch it all happen…if you are paying £10K, we will ask you to help us in a few small ways.

What will I need to do towards the planning of a Kit Stone fitted kitchen?

In order to keep our costs, and therefore kitchen price, down, we try to minimise visits to our customers’ homes. Once you have done your research and have come to the conclusion that a Kit Stone fitted kitchen may be for you, then we would advise you to try to visit our showroom to have an informal planning meeting sitting in one of our fitted kitchens. We would ask you to bring to this meeting as detailed a set of plans/measurements that you can provide yourself. Many of our customers are installing a kitchen into an extension/renovation/new build, so they provide architects drawings. 

After this meeting if you would like to progress further and have us draw up some fitted kitchen plans for you, then we may ask for a deposit at this stage, this will be fully refundable against your eventual order. We will then produce a number of drawings in liaison with you until you are completely happy with the fitted kitchen layout.  We will then ask you to sign off this plan and the components list and pay your deposit before we put the kitchen into production. From this stage, your kitchen will take 6-8 weeks to be delivered.

Will Kit Stone fit our kitchen for us?

At present Kit Stone are supply only, but with a list of self employed fitters who we recommend. All of our cabinets come as a ready made free standing piece of furniture all fitting entails is making sure they are level, butting them against one another and fixing to the wall. We have a number of customers who have fitted their kitchen themselves with no previous experience. Other customers, if they are extending or a new build, will add the kitchen fit to their builders quote.   

What are Kit Stone’s Dorchester fitted kitchen cabinets constructed from?

All of our fitted kitchen cabinets are an ‘in frame’, solid, hand made, hand painted, craftsman built piece of furniture. The frames are all constructed from a wood called bass wood, a member of the lime tree family, well renowned for its resistance to warping, splitting and cracking. The frames and facias are all solid wood and for the large panel and carcass work we use an 18mm birch faced poplar marine ply. This has the unique character of real wood, yet is completely stable, resistant to moisture and easily paintable. Every cabinet is constructed using mortice and tennon  and dovetail joints, backed up with the best modern epoxy glues set in hydraulic presses. Our doors are all individually constructed to fit within the frame and secured with solid butt hinges, they are not mere facias. Nowhere in our kitchens do we use MDF or Chipboard and not one of our cabinets arrives with you flatpacked.

What if a cabinet needs adapting or gets damaged in the future or I decide to repaint it?

Because all of our cabinets are individually made solid pieces of freestanding furniture crafted from solid wood they are very easy to adapt. For example it is very easy to cut the back out of a cabinet to fit a water softener or other appliance and the stability of the cabinet will in no way be compromised. Also, because our cabinets are constructed from solid wood and hand painted they are very easy to repair if they get damaged. The wonderful thing about being hand painted is that you can always fill and touch up any damage without it being noticed. If you fancy a new look after a couple of years you can then re-paint the whole fitted kitchen at minimum cost.