Harvey Jones Kitchens Post Reply

[mollys]

we have just got a gorgeous kitchen from Kit Stone on the Wandsworth Bridge Road. Don't be put off by the expensive looking shop - the total cost was cheaper than Magnet, but it is ten times better quality. The downside is it takes 7 weeks from ordering to receiving the kitchen, but they are amazing and the customer service is the best I have ever had from any shop.
If you want cheap then try Howdens - but you pay for it in blood, sweat and tears if not in hard cash - they take ages to come back to you, they get it all wrong and often waste your time; and also they are trade so you need to do it all through your builder.
Good luck!

[capmum]

I got a quote from Harvey Jones - quote for fitting, painting and furniture was just less than £30k. We then mentioned to our architect that we were looking for a traditional painted kitchen and he recommended Neptune (www.neptune.co.uk). We now have our new kitchen and I absolutely love it. Only downside with Neptune is there are only a few styles and you have to drive out to Waybridge to see the furniture in the flesh at an outlet called Surrey Kitchens. For us it was well worth the journey - total cost of furniture was £13 AND it was better quality than HJ. Our builder reckoned it looked more like a £40k kitchen. Definitely worth checking out.

[Suzy K]

Will try and keep this short as there's already a lot of info on this thread but I just wanted to defend Howdens a little - as an interior designer I often recommend them as they are produced by a proper joinery company who offer good quality and great value for money. They generally only deal with trade customers and in my experience will almost always turn quotes and drawing around in a day. I would suggest that your builder/interior designer (whoever it is that you're using to place the order) needs to keep in touch with Howdens to ensure that you're not disappointed. If you go to them direct it may be that things take longer as you are following a different ordering process to what they normally do.

Another great company to check out is Kit Stone, traditional style kitchens (think John Lewis of Hungerford, Plain English) for a fraction of the price.

Top tip to make a less expensive kitchen look a whole lot better is to choose your cabinet furniture carefully - often what Howdens/Magnet/B&Q supply is not that great. Worth a trip to SDS or Farmer Bros (Fulham Rd).

Finally, when we put in our new kitchen we freecycled all the old units so it's worth looking on there for second hand units.

Sorry, think I failed at keeping this short!

[3hotcrossbunnies]

Interestingly my mother-in-law mentioned Neptune kitchens to us this weekend as some friends of hers had just had a new one fitted in Suffolk. I think Kit Stone might stock this make too???

Anyway - we've hit a problem with the underfloor heating which is going to make a change of lay out (moving sink and dishwasher to island) more complicated and therefore more expensive..... Don't know if we will bother now. Gutted, I was looking forward to a fab new kitchen!!!

[amybelle79]

We had our kitchen done in march and I spent a long time looking for the best value/ quality combination.

I wanted a traditional wooden shaker style. Harvey Jones was significantly more expensive than others, even including the discounts.

In the end, we went with a Kit Stone kitchen (show room on wandsworth bridge road). Solid wood and lots of lovely touches that make it feel far more expensive than it is. My mother in law (total kitchen snob) walked in and immediately assumed it was a fancy pants Smallbone kitchen!! Very helpful staff (Francesca planned out kitchen for us), lovely quality kitchen and brilliant customer service.

Like others I sourced my own appliances, worktops and floor tiles and managed to save £2k.

Good luck!

[supergirl]

May I suggest Battersea Design on the corner of Chivalry Rd and Battersea Rise?
Do not be put off with the shop being closed all the time (his wife was in charge of the shop before she passed away so now he is in sole charge) and do give Giles a call on his mobile to arrange a meeting.

Giles is a lovely man, old school and true to his word. All his drawings are done by hand and when he gives his word it does mean something. This is a gem, so rare in our world to still be able to find people like that.

I have ordered a kitchen from him for my parents pied-a-terre here in Battersea. The quote was bespoke yet in the range of all the others you have mentionned. The kitchen is a work of art, this is Crafstmanship (with a capital C). His choice of granit is great and price OK (well this is granit).

I cannot recommend him highly enough. We should support him, he has been in the area for like... forever and he knows his stuff, and he is completely independant.

[mustard]

I run a Kitchen design & manufacture company and stumbled across your post. We have been making proper, bespoke In Frame kitchens for several years, and have recently had a lot of requests to replicate a well known company's (I was asked by them to remove their name from my post) styles. I have done alot of research into their product and procedures. We are going to be bringing out a range that replicates their style (frame and door design sizes) but with certain key improvements - as we have discovered that while their product is quite good it is far from ideal, and all the options that we would insist on seem to come at increased prices eg: using a colour matched carcase rather than white, using better drawers etc etc. To be fair to them, and the other posts mentioning the likes of Benchmarx and Howdens, they are in different leagues. But without wasting space on this forum going into technical differences, all I can say is that we can replicate A Well known brands product but saving several thousand pounds. Contact me on 0208 660 3027 or chris@mustardkitchens.co.uk if you want an informal chat about it all.
As for local competitors try Roundhouse on Fulham Road which is a nicer product IMHO or Kitstones on Wandsorth Bridge Road - if you don't mind a smaller range but they are more honest with their pricing.

[HSD]

Hi,

We have just had our house refurbished and we bought a Harvey Jones kitchen. They are not the cheapest by a long way, but if you are prepared to negotiate pretty hard with them, you can get a lot knocked off the initial quote. Beware of the extras though (door handles, painting, delivery etc). Also beware of their policy on delivering to 'watertight rooms'. Our builders were just finishing our kitchen extension and the back bifold doors were not in. Harvey Jones showed up with the kitchen and refused to deliver it until the doors were in. My husband actually stood in front of the delivery van until they changed their minds! Their project management service is ok, I would have expected a but more given the price of their kitchens. Overall though, we love our new kitchen, it was worth the stress and additional cost. Hope this helps.

[Elizabeth24]

Consider West London Kitchens

This is a busy thread but I'll wade in... my husband and I run West London Kitchens together, selling beautiful, bespoke German family kitchens. Our prices are incredibly competitive as we don't run traditional showrooms - instead, we take you to visit a couple of kitchens we've installed so you get to see real kitchens in real homes. All our kitchens are designed and built completely bespoke and are delivered ready built; no nasty flatpacks.

Please have a look at our website for more information (http://www.westlondonkitchens.com) and give us a ring on 020 8741 1981. Our design service is completely free.

Thanks
Elizabeth Dare

[fulhammum]

I purchased a Harvey Jones kitchen last year and during their sales process they were charming and professional. As soon as they were paid the customer service and professionalism stopped.
They have HUGE markups on their kitchens, they are not good value for money. For example they wanted to charge me £5,000 for the granite for my works surfaces. I got the granite code and sourced it myself for £2500, suddenly they were able to drop their price to this level.
We had another issue around payment, I paid them £10,000 up from and when I tried to transfer the balance due to a technical issue with it being a weekend etc the transfer failed we had no idea until I was told that my kitchen had been offloaded and wouldn't be able to be delivered again for another couple of working days. Had they just picked up the phone I could have easily remedied the situation. It was really inconvenient.
The finish was really bad, I had to get the painter they recommended back because there were whole areas unpainted, I had to get the carpenter to come back because of problems with the fitting.
When the granite was laid it cracked some of the wood underneath and Harvey Jones solution was to send someone out with a nail gun to make sure that the panel held in place rather than doing a professional job. It was so difficult to get someone to call me back to address these issues once they had received my payment. This was a £30,000 kitchen! Just not good enough.
I received a handwritten scrap of paper at the end which was meant to represent a guarantee. A year later I have issues with the kitchen and I am dreading going back to them because of their truly awful service. I did complain by the way and they didn't even bother responding. I would not recommend this company

[LONG1A]

We used KIT STONE on Wandsworth Bridge Road and our Suffolk kitchen is really beautiful and everyone comments on it, asking where we got it etc...The service was brilliant and I would seriously recommend kit stone....we love our kitchen!

[Martina1]

We are about to use a company called Parlour Farm who are in Chichester. We went for a day out to see the kitchens and Bridget there was really helpful. I had worried that my architect's designs for the kitchen looked lovely but didn't give me nearly enough space. Bridget spent a few days working on the plans and emailed me an alternative with bags of storage.

I'll report back towards the end of the year when the extension is done and the kitchen fitted!

[minniemouse]

harvey Jobes? Don't do it. The sales patter is wild but in our experience the reality is far from what is promised.

They constantly change the spec without consultation. First they removed their flagship larder unit and replaced it with simple shelves. Then we noticed the codes on the appliances had changed and they had downgraded every appliance saving themselves almost £9000 and it took us weeks to get them to agree to the original spec they had provided to get us to sign the order and pay the deposit.

Though the process from signing and paying the deposit took almost 3 months they constantly slip extra costs in, even adding another £200 on the day they asked for payment in full.

Finally when it came to installation the fitter did 2 short days, said he had one day finishing on another job to do, then didn't turn up the following day. After many calls they finally admitted that he wouldn't be back for another 12 days leaving our kitchen in pieces and dust and mess everywhere.

We insisted on another fitter - who fitted the cabinets wrongly. This was followed by another delay of 2 weeks while they got the surveyor back to review the situation.

Don't do it would be my advice it's not worth the risk and the kitchen ended up costing more than the equivalent quoted by roundhouse.

[Martina1]

We are very happy with our Parlour Farm kitchen. The service was great, the product lovely and the price reasonable for a handmade kitchen. We have recommended them without hesitation to friends.

[Writerlady]

We had a kitchen designed and produced by Jolanta at Eclectic Interiors on Abbeville Road and it was all finished yesterday! Amazing service, truly professional. Nothing too much trouble. Fitter and painter were both so good and really took their time (a week to fit and a week to paint). The finish is of a very high quality. They hold your hand every step of the way to make sure you are happy. Jolanta even spent more than an hour helping me decide the best colour scheme for the room - way above and beyond. Very impressed. Would highly recommend.