Bargain B&Q Kitchen
So what happened about the kitchen, this is way back in the past and I should have written this down somewhere, fact is I thought I had, anyway I’ll do my best to dredge it up from my memory.
When I was interviewed for Homes Under the Hammer, I seem to remember saying “you can do a lot for a little money” and I seem to remember the presenter Martin Roberts agreeing with me on this point. Turns out this was one of the few points he did agree with me on, it was however the one point I think any green agenda conscious presenter would have found difficult to disagree on.
Anyway since starting on the house I’ve found that there’s very little out there that one can tackle for very little money when one has very little time to do it and very little help to go with this time. Sure I had this image of me sitting cross-legged in my hallway meticulously putting together a mosaic pattern floor, fashioned together from the shards of ceramic tiles of my fireplaces and a Pullman Coach I found in the back of a local farmer’s barn. Reality biting and with no time, not a bit of help and in the interests of cracking on to get the job done… then things cost cash, lots of cash.
Anyway the kitchen bucked this trend and this is what – to the best of my memory – happened.
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A lunch-hour sometime before Christmas and I toodled off to my local B&Q to pick up some handles for a set of drawers. I knew that the petrol would probably cost more than the handles but I fancied a trip out and I do love B&Q, call me sad, but I do love B&Q J
Anyway I spotted handles that were just what I needed and ones I thought Izzi would appreciate too – with her very strict policy on “shiny and sparkly” that is. Anyway that was that and I still had my entire lunch to go so I thought it would be useful time spent to have a wander around and pick up some ideas. I think that anything such as this is useful, just wandering and you’ll subconsciously pick up trends, you’ll familiarise yourself with prices, you’ll wander into the kitchen department and pick up an amazing bargain, well perhaps.
Anyway I did just that, wandering around the kitchen section I found just what I was looking for, my agenda was a little different to Izzi’s, not “shiny and sparkly” but “contemporary, quality but traditional” – with a smattering of “off-the-wall” I must admit I’m not a great fan of B&Q kitchens, based not my experiences but one of my friends, however B&Q do a rather fetching line in the rather nice Cooke and Lewis kitchens, their top-of-their-range kitchens. So it was that I found myself looking at a pair of displays, two of their rather lovely Carisbrooke kitchens, one an eggshell blue and other in an old English green, very fetching. Very traditional but contemporary… very nice indeed and as the price tag said only £100 per unit. I asked an assistant, could you tell me more about these?
“Cooke and Lewis, top of the range, solid wood, ex’ display, end of line, £100 each”
“£100 for each unit”
“No, £100 for each kitchen, if you can get them in the car, pay us £100 each, then they’re yours”
Basically everything that they couldn’t re-use would be included, the drawers, the runners, the door fronts and maybe even the handles. All I had to find were the worktops, the carcasses and perhaps the handles.
Got back in the car and in a bit of a daze I headed back to work. Y’know that feeling that it just can’t be that good, offers that good just cannot be true, so therefore it cannot be true. I’d taken a couple of pictures on my phone and I showed them to the tech’s, they were all of the same opinion to get it and get it now.
So I did…
I was straight there after work, I got them to reserve both of the kitchens and also to sort out the handle dilemma – they were sure I would get the handles too.
The next day I was still at work but I reckoned I could tackle it all in a lunch hour.
So wearing a three piece suit and tie – which one reflection might not have been appropriate smutter – I headed into B&Q. In a pile near a couple of kitchen fitters there they were two ex-display kitchens in bits. I asked the two guys whether the handles were there too, they said that they didn’t think it included the handles, I explained that I thought it did.
Anyway I got a trolley, loaded up the bits and headed to the checkout, I paid my £200 and two loads, a bit of elbow grease and some Tetris car wangling later and my car was full to the gunnels with kitchen units.
There were quite a few interested parties as this man in a suit, man-handled the bits into his aging X-Trail but I wasn’t bothered, I felt like a bargain superman. OK maybe I didn’t, but I wasn’t bothered by the attention at least and I had bagged a bargain.
Heading home later that day I took in the B&Q in Darlington just to find out whether there were any other bits that I might discover there on a similar cheap as chips end-of-line kitchen basis, I was aware that I might need some more bits to finish off the kitchens. As it turned out there weren’t but the assistants were quite amazed by my tale of kitchen bargains at the Stockton branch.
Also on the way back I decided to do a bit of a food shop and I rewarded myself with a bottle of vino to crack open once I got the kitchen home, a reward for the work that I’d put in. Opening the door to the car on getting back the wine leapt out of the car, having been perched precariously on top of the kitchen units and it cracked itself open on my driveway. Not a good end to the day, but heyho.
So I now have a lot of work ahead of me in sourcing the correct bits to finish off the kitchen, this provoked me in some way to get the TradePoint card. At that point I was under the misapprehension that access to this card might allow me further access to the discontinued parts bin, so as I could source more bits should I need them to finish off my kitchen install. I have since found that this is probably not the case, though I yet have to check.
Getting my bits back to I was surprised and happy to find a box full of drawer handles. As the handles were from two kitchens they were a bit mix and match, this in turn goes well with the mixed cabinet colours and fits in with my policy of “off-the-wall” ness.
That weekend I got a call from B&Q
“Hello is that the man who bought our end of line kitchens?”
“Erm Yes”
“Well you weren’t supposed to, but you have the drawer handles”
“Erm yes, hard luck”
“Well we’d be very happy to forget about them if you’d just bring back two frames that you may have accidently taken when you left”
“Oh those grey ones, I wondered what they were, I’ll have them back to you in a jiffy”
I returned them that weekend, a quick ready reckoner and I think I have around £5k of kitchen for only £200.
Not bad Mr. Martin Roberts.