So honestly.... yes, we really annoyed the individual kitchen studios (NO furniture store chains)! We had the same kitchen planned in 6 different kitchen studios, including a carpenter, where it was more of an implementation since we had already planned the kitchen in detail ourselves. Of course, we also planned the same one (as far as possible) at Ikea. What can I say, we paid 22,000.- for our kitchen, for 18,000.- I could have gotten it at Ikea with a worse layout, poorer quality, and not even close to as good fronts. I don't even want to start with the appliances; if we had to buy them ourselves too, the Ikea kitchen would even have been more expensive than the kitchen studio. But now we have our dream kitchen, with frosted glass fronts, flush high cabinets continuous at 2.70m with extended fronts down to the floor, all handleless, Nero Assoluto brushed stone countertop, 3 undermount sinks, brilliant faucets, a huge cooking island measuring 1.20m x 2.40m (with integrated old planer’s bench), top-class appliances from Bosch Series 8, Neff downdraft extractor, Miele dishwasher, and a side-by-side refrigerator, the work surface on the window side with 85cm depth, etc........ you just don’t get that at Ikea.
And yes, I was cheeky enough to play that game and gradually played the kitchen studios against each other. Why not, it’s my right! In the end, we didn’t just take the cheapest kitchen studio, but paid 2,000.- more and bought from where we were treated well and honestly from the start. If after 6 offers for the same kitchen you end up at about the same price with all of them and then really start to negotiate, then you’re on the right track.....
What I actually wanted to say is that of course most want to gouge us as customers at first, but only because most allow themselves to be gouged! Anyone who doesn’t want to play along just has to invest a little more work and time, and you’ll see that it can also be done at a much higher level without costing 50,000.- right away.....