Our experience with buying a kitchen

Most house constructions also include the purchase of a new kitchen, as is the case with us. Here are our experiences.

By the topping-out ceremony, the kitchen should be planned so that the positions of the connections for the installations are fixed.

Selection of the brand
The most difficult task is to inform yourself about the various brands. Interesting sources of information are various websites (Küchen-Atlas, Küchen-Portal as well as the disq study on kitchen brands).

The different kitchen brands differ not only in price, quality, and customer satisfaction but also in an important characteristic, the corpus height, which varies between 70-80 cm. If you plan an elevated countertop height of about 92 cm, you should not choose a kitchen brand that has corpora of 72 cm, otherwise the plinth must be too high and too much space will be wasted. Ideal would be, for example, the following: 10 cm plinth plus 78 cm corpus plus 4 cm countertop result in a countertop height of 92 cm.

Basics of planning
The planning in the kitchen studio gets better the more ideas you already have. Classic questions are:

[*]Surface of cabinets: melamine resin, foil and laminate, lacquer laminate, UV lacquer, paint, glass, real wood,...
[*]Countertop: laminate, laminate, artificial or natural stone (very expensive!), solid wood/real wood,...
[*]Type of cabinets: pull-out cabinet, pharmacy cabinet, corner carousel solution, corner LeMans solution, wall cabinet,...
[*]Brand of electrical appliances: e.g. Bosch/Siemens (are identical)
[*]Which appliances should be at eye level (stove? dishwasher?), which can go below (dishwasher? freezer compartment)?
[*]Features of the electrical appliances: refrigerator (Vitafresh, Hydrofresh, NoFrost, A++/A+++), stove (microwave integrated, pyrolysis, telescopic rails), dishwasher (A++/A+++, dB, cutlery drawer/cutlery compartment) stove (width 60 cm/90 cm, steel/Ceran/induction/gas/flex induction)
[*]Other appliances: extractor hood, sink, faucet, lighting elements,...

Our most beautiful kitchen element: The sink BLANCO AXIS II 6 S-IF Edition

Selection of the kitchen studio
The consultation is sometimes very different, but this depends a lot on the individual consultant, the prices are even more different. The same kitchen varied in price by 30-40% or up to 5000 €. We visited Küchen Keie (Mainz), Möbel Martin (Mainz), Meda Küchen (Wiesbaden), Möbel Schwaab (Ingelheim) and Möbel Preiss (Kastellaun). The best consultation we had with Ms. Ackermann at Meda Küchen, the best prices were at Möbel Martin and Möbel Preiss.

Price comparison
Prices can only be compared if the offer is identical, i.e. same brand, same planning and same equipment.

Buying a kitchen is really not easy.

In the end, I drew the kitchen myself with the Alno kitchen planner and sent the plans. After that, I received an offer. Based on the offer, I was able to negotiate my preferred dealer down a bit.
But the price range is enormous.
The only important thing is to know what you want.
The most popular way to lower the price was simply to omit a service or to take the worse/cheaper appliance.
The other trick was, "I have to talk to my boss first." After 5 minutes, they came back saying they could make the price, but only if you sign immediately.
And the next big drawback is that absolutely no one releases any documents. If you ever get a picture of the kitchen, that was the best you could hope for.

I just found the - actually always very obvious - sales "tricks" of the salespeople simply annoying! Unfortunately, it was the same for us in every kitchen studio. The consultations ranged from very good to really bad and unmotivated. Interestingly, in the end, we had the most honest offer in a furniture store, which otherwise is not necessarily known for transparent pricing.

One kitchen studio and two furniture stores later, we found our kitchen at the third furniture store.
Interestingly, we had a proper planning and development process that got better from planner to planner.
The first design was both dark in color and miserable in layout.
We would have liked to sign the last design immediately, after two days of “consideration time” we received another 500 € “discount” as well as the windowsill in the countertop decor at no extra charge during the measurement.
Found in our favorite furniture store.

Hello,

you should never forget to mention the discounts !!:

- Midnight discount
- Year-end discount
- Receipt discount seller
- I'll ask the boss discount
- The boss is not here but I pretend and go around the corner and come back discount

In the end, only what comes out counts

Funny how buying a kitchen always seems to rub many people the wrong way. We also visited various kitchen studios and furniture stores. In the end, it was the carpenter around the corner. No discount battles and excellent ideas.