Chapter Two – The Dream
“To sleep, perchance to dream”, or so they say. In our case it was to wake, perchance to dream. Having made the fateful decision to indulge in a new kitchen we set about searching for a suitable company in whose direction to throw our money. Should we “B & Q it” or go the whole hog and have a luxury, custom designed masterpiece that would be the envy of all our friends? Keeping an open mind I collected B & Q kitchen brochures and also made a note of a few local kitchen companies to phone. I also searched the Internet – Pat always said I would come a cropper one day, relying on it as I do. Is it the fact that she is the foster daughter of a Romany gypsy that gives her the gift of second sight I wonder? One web site I found asked simply for email address, telephone number and kitchen size in order to provide a quote. Foolishly I responded.
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The next day I received a telephone call from Anglian Home Improvements asking if they could send a representative round to show us their kitchens and provide a quote. Why not? Why not indeed! Before we knew it we had Mr Flood firmly ensconced upon our settee determined not to go away without hooking and landing us. Oh, he was eloquent, I give him that. And his statistics were impressive (NO, not THOSE statistics!). Did you know, for example, that only Anglian Home Improvements and those really posh kitchen firms who deliver and install to the stars, have 40mm worktops? Yes, really, it must be true, Mr Flood said so. Or that a £2,000 B & Q kitchen will cost you £4,000 to have installed by the B & Q fitters? Oh yes indeed, Mr Flood said so, therefore it must be true. Or that most kitchens, except the most expensive, used cheap laminated chipboard, not furniture quality board, and had mainly white carcases, not colour co-ordinated? Oh yes, it IS true; we were told so by Mr Flood!
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Anyway, after a few hours of spiel and a 5 minute look around the kitchen, he drew us a plan, reassuring me when I expressed misgivings about losing some big cupboards, that it “ would actually offer more storage space than it already had due to the cupboards having three, instead of two, shelves.” OK, Mr Flood, I believe you. We accepted that, for the sake of our luxury designer kitchen, we would have to settle for a much smaller, but infinitely neater, integral fridge, we shrugged and said to each other “well, we can put the old one in the garage as an overspill fridge, especially for Christmas. In the event, the seal of the door having seen better days, we invested in a new fridge-freezer for the garage. The plan seemed OK, not that either of us are experts in reading kitchen plans but, hey, we had an expert here who was assuring us it would be fine.
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OK, next ploy was the “Show Kitchen” plan. A good one this, staple fare of salesmen the world over; I really cannot believe we fell for it and us so worldly wise. If we would agree to have “before and after” pictures taken and have a little sign up outside the bungalow for a couple of weeks advertising the kitchen as being from Anglian Home Improvements and would write a letter and, possibly, be willing to show a few people around the kitchen, we could have a massive 40% discount. Sounded good, especially as for every person we recommended who actually had a kitchen installed we would get £65. Give us the contract!!! Ah, but first he had to phone his boss, using our phone (don’t these guys have mobiles??) and make sure the quota for our area was not fully subscribed. And, wow, guess what? We were actually the very first in our area so the discount was all ours! Great, where’s that ****** contract???
Once we had agreed, in principle, to become the very first show kitchen in South Ribble it was time to view samples of the quality with which we were about to surround ourselves. To say that we were impressed is something of an understatement. The quality of the samples was superb. Even Douglas, our abused rescue kitten (NO! he was abused BEFORE we got him, he is far from abused now) thought that the dinky little miniature show cabinet was ideal for a cat bed and happily settled down in it to go to sleep. We then experienced the sheer delight of trying out a drawer mechanism, so smooth and silky, all metal, none of your cheap plastic rubbish here. We sat enthralled as Mr Flood enthusiastically demonstrated the unique worktop joints perfected by his company and the clip on plinths, ideal in the event of a disaster with the plumbing – just clip off, wipe under, clip on again. Finally we perused the catalogue to pick out the colour of units and worktops to complement our soon-to-be dream kitchen.
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Then it was time for prices. “El cheapo” bottom of range, bog standard unit sizes (“all ours are custom made especially for your kitchen, we do use standard sizes where we can but essentially the kitchen is built to fit”) came in at around £4,000. Middle of range, still only 25mm worktops, laminate chipboard doors, white carcases, but bit more designer input, clocked £6,000ish. Top of Range, super designed, 40mm worktops, furniture grade doors, matching carcases, superb after sales service, personalised number plate job, upwards of £10,000. And Anglian?? Well, “full” price around £9,000, but, BUT, with our show home status, a generous discount brought this down to £6,100.
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After a little haggle, well, a purchase is no fun without a haggle is - we had a deal. They would not only install our dream kitchen, they would also remove the old tiles and make good any damaged plaster, level the floor under the washer and dryer and also cart away all our old kitchen. In return we would pay them £6,000 (notice how I managed to make that odd £100 “disappear”?) Sounded like a good deal to me. So, 10% deposit paid, when can you start?
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