Buying Your Kitchen

5: Do the legwork

1. Having chosen at least four companies to approach telephone them to make an appointment. Organise your time efficiently, especially if you have to travel some distance. Allow a maximum of 45 minutes for an initial consultation. Any more is tiring and you start to forget things.
    
2. Inform them of your plans, your budget and your timescale. Discuss your project informally and listen to their ideas and suggestions. Listen carefully and make notes if it helps you to remember. At this stage you are actually interviewing them as you might a prospective employee. Who will you entrust the job to?
    
3. Ask them for the names and contact details of 6 clients for whom they have installed kitchens during the last 6 months. You will telephone as many of these as you deem necessary to reassure yourself that the kitchen maker is competent and gives the level of service you require. It pays to visit some kitchens if the customers will allow it, where you can see the quality of the work yourself.
    
4. Back home decide on the three companies you will ask to quote. Contact the customers whose names you have been given. Ask them specific questions about how the kitchen maker works. Do they do as they say they will? Were there any problems? How did the kitchen maker sort those problems out? Would they recommend them? Are there any caveats to that recommendation?

If you do not have three left after your interviews, select more from the list you made at the beginning and interview them so that you can find your three. Your aim is to obtain three proposals and quotations to choose from, from companies you feel comfortable with.

5. Draw up a list of requirements for your kitchen. It is a good idea to have two columns. On the left-hand column put in your absolutely must haves. These are the elements that you have decided make up the minimum requirements for your kitchen. They will include your appliances for instance. Other requirements might be a double sink, waste master, pull-out pantry, island, integrated dishwasher, etc. These are non-negotiable and it is the kitchen designer’s problem to get them all in to your satisfaction.

On the right-hand column go your wish list items. These are things that you would like but which might have to be sacrificed due to cost, lack of space, impracticality, etc. These might include a granite bench top, soft close drawers, glass doors, built-in TV, etc.

What you are doing here is concentrating your mind on what is important, creating a common reference point for everybody in the process. When it comes to comparing quotes it should be possible to compare apples with apples. You have also set a challenge for the kitchen designer – give me the biggest bangs for my bucks!

6. Only now are you ready to start getting kitchen plans drawn up and quotations tendered. All your careful preparations mean that all three kitchen designers have the same brief, a level playing field if you will. This is crucially important because it enables you to control the bidding process rather than allowing the salespeople to tell you what you really want.
    
7. Make appointments to meet the kitchen designers of the three companies you have chosen. Give them your brief and your budget or at least a ‘between x and y’ price range. Be up-front and honest at all times. You are in control, you have actually chosen the people you are now approaching so there is no need to be cagey or for secret agendas. Tell them that you are getting three quotes and that you will choose your kitchen on the basis of design and price.
    
8. Don’t forget to read carefully the Terms of Trade of each company. This is a very important part of the contract you will be signing up to. Although you cannot sign away your rights in law, you might dispense with some useful safeguards if you are not careful. In particular consider the payment terms, the size of the deposit, stage payments if any and the retention (the proportion you withhold until you are satisfied with your kitchen). The terms should be as favourable to you as you can make them. You might be able to negotiate better terms for yourself.

If you have any concerns about the contract seek legal advice before you sign.

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Kitchen Designers

New Zealand Directory of Kitchen Suppliers