i dont know where these astronomical prices come from. when i did my HUGE kitchen the breakdown was something like this...
benchtop 3.8mX 1.1m L shape plus 1mx900mm island top. $800 Cupboard/draw units $2300 Hob +oven $1300 samsung dishwasher $1100 tap $89 rangehood $180 (factory second damage was on the unseen side) gib sheets $200 elec and plumbing $300 paint$200
there was about $500 for the tiles but that was part of a whole laundry/entrance way layout that went into the kitchen...
time....well there was lots of that.
our friends sunk $40K into a kitchen and in all honesty ours was FAAAAAAARRRRRR better.
Hey K14 we did get a quote for the quartz based engineered stone which came in at the same price as medium rated granite - 3K. We are not talking big benches here, one 1.2m the other is 2.1m with one sink cutout.
I am now exploring some other engineered options like acrylic based, but have no idea on price, will update others on what I find.
I did a kitchen reno a few years ago. Mostly DIY. We had a laminate bench in our last place that we sold 6 months ago. We had a few building inspections from potential buyers and they thought that it was engineered stone. The trick is that we had it at 50mm thickness with a really tight bullnose. The only thing that I would have done differently is not under mount the sinks as we did get a few chips there over the 3 years we had it. With the nice sinks you can get these days an over mount looks the part.
Also agree on getting good tapeware (We used Methven) and getting an inline water filter. http://www.mountainfresh.co.nz
Also with the gib off the wall now is the time to run any wiring - power, network cable or TV aerial
For the splashback we ended up tiling becasue glass was about $2000 where as we did a white tile with a feature pattern for about $200. Never had an issue with cleaning it.
itxtme: Hey K14 we did get a quote for the quartz based engineered stone which came in at the same price as medium rated granite - 3K. We are not talking big benches here, one 1.2m the other is 2.1m with one sink cutout.
I am now exploring some other engineered options like acrylic based, but have no idea on price, will update others on what I find.
Cheers
For our bench granite was cheaper than engineered stone but there was only about $100 in it on $6k worth of tops. The bench top cost us more than the cabinets, even though they were custom made with Blum soft closers and two Haefele carousel corner units.
we used sharp edged gloss tiles (600x300) for the splash back that looked like glass panels, using only very small gaps between the tiles. it looked great but i needed to make sure they were perfectly installed and aligned because any differences would reflect the light differently..the tiles were way cheaper than a tinted/painted glass
I went down to harvey norman and they had these cool black engineered stone sinks. they looked well impressive and had some good accessories too.and the best bit was that they didnt make that horrible noise when you clunk something against them
like floydie we used 600x300 gloss white sharp edged tiles with the smallest spacer you could get - either 1 or 2mm. I thought I would have a pic that I could find easily but it looks like this area wasn't photographed much :-) This photo must have been not long after I layed the tiles and are in the process of putting up the coving.
The tiles look really good for 1/10th the price.
we broke the white up a little with a mosaic tile strip. Tiles where from the Tile Depot.
The water filter you replace the internal filter once a year. You can tell it does the work as the old filter is heavy and discoloured - you don't want to be drinking that stuff!
Another thing I can recommend would be to take the cabinets to the ceiling if you have a standard 2.4m height. The one we have now is 2.1meters and is just a dust trap and waste of space.
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