close

Buying a Used Kitchen

Today I am going to tell you about my discovery of a brilliant site that allows you to buy and sell used kitchens which not only saves them from landfill but also means, if you are quick, that you can pick up designer kitchens – Plain English, Devol and, er mine (!) for a fraction of the original price. It’s called the Used Kitchen Exchange and it’s such a great idea that not only am I selling my old kitchen there but I wanted to tell you about it too.

Pre-loved kitchen re-installed from Used Kitchen Exchange 2
Pre-loved kitchen re-installed from Used Kitchen Exchange

When we moved into this house one of the first things we noticed was that it had a free-standing kitchen. Friends dropping round to inspect noted that it was a Habitat Olivia, which was first made in the 90s, and some spoke nostalgically of how they had either had one or wanted one but been unable to afford it. Paul Middlemiss, the founder of vintage seller Merchant & Found and an old friend of this blog, popped up in my messages to say that as a former buying director for Habitat, he had overseen the very first designs.

Made from solid beech with storage baskets and shelves it is well-crafted and, judging by searches on eBay, quite collectable as you can add pieces to it as you need as long as you are prepared to wait for them to come up for sale. There definitely wasn’t enough of it in this space and, as regular readers will know, we had about 30 boxes that we were unable to unpack – this is partly because we moved from a very large kitchen to a smaller one and there was 12 years accumulation of stuff. We weighed up the pros and cons and decided, since we were going to redo the whole room and change the layout, that we would prefer to install a new kitchen. This was also partly as we couldn’t be sure when new pieces would turn up and if they would be the pieces we needed. The decision was made to put Olivia in storage and move her to Italy when the time came.

And then the time came. And the house that we have found has a kitchen upstairs, which is made from brick uprights with open shelves and is rather charming and we don’t want to rip it out. And downstairs there is a big kitchen that does need replacing and once again we wouldn’t have enough pieces.

And so we come to the Used Kitchen Exchange. I contacted them and asked if they might be interested in selling mine. The procedure is fairly simple. They come and take pictures – mine were not the greatest as we were already in a dusty building site by the time we decided to sell – which is also about inspecting the condition of it as for the pretty shots. They put it on the site and when a firm offer is received they collect and deliver it to the new buyers. You can see it all here.

It’s such a simple idea and one that is sorely needed. When I replaced the worktop in the last house, the fitter told me that he had one client who replaced her marble worktops every 18 months. We all know about the waste of natural resources but the other tragedy is that had she known about UKE (let’s assume she didn’t) someone else could have re-used those worktops for a fraction of the price.

Like my other favourites, The Haines Collection, which collects left over fabrics (and now tiles) from design projects, the Used Kitchen Exchange, is providing a brilliant service that can save both money and waste. In addition to used kitchens, they also sell ex-display models which are pretty much as new. Some of them come with appliances as well.

 

devol kitchen sold by Used Kitchen Exchange 

Helen Lord, founder of UKE,  told me of one customer who bought a large kitchen island from them: “She used the individual units to furnish her entire kitchen and had enough let over to make a vanity unit for her bathroom. Reconfiguring a pre-installed kitchen is like a grown up game of Tetris.”

The point to note is that once you take the worktop off you have a collection of cupboards that you can often use in any format you want. “We have two types of customer” says Helen. “Those who want a kitchen they can pluck out of the listing and have fitted in their home with little alteration, and those who almost treat the kitchens like a less expensive, and more sustainable way, to buy raw materials. We’ve seen some really dramatic transformations.”

Pre-loved kitchen re-installed from Used Kitchen Exchange

If you are unsure how to make it work Helen suggests using graph paper and post-it notes. “Mark out your kitchen to scale on the graph paper and cut the post-its no the size of your cabinets. Label them according to purpose – storage, oven, dishwasher etc, and move them around until you have the right layout.”

Of course if you buy my old kitchen they are already in separate units so once you have plumbed in the sink you can move the others around on a daily basis should you wish. The room had a range cooker, which was not in a fit state to sell, but you could also get a builder to make you an oven housing if you can’t find an Olivia one in your searches.

Devol Kitchen sold by Used Kitchen Exchange

For every kitchen sold, its subsequent re-use saves on average 5,000kgs of carbon which is, to put it in terms that we can understand, about one year of being carbon neutral for a family of four. To date UKE has saved 13,036,399kgs of carbon and nearly 6,000 trees.

And by the way, they do only get about one Devol a year so you might need to set up an alert for that one. But a quick peruse at the time of writing reveals a Humphrey Munson for £21K (instead of five times that amount) as well as a couple of others with Miele and Wolf appliances, a Roundhouse and a John Lewis of Hungerford to name but a few. They also sell ex bathroom display units and discontinued lines alongside appliances and even reconditioned Quooker taps – something I wish I’d realised before I bought a new one three months ago that has been sitting in a box waiting to be installed.

So if you are thinking of redoing your kitchen do check out Used Kitchen Exchange, you may be able to sell your old one and buy another all from the same place.

Things To Consider Before You Decide To Sell Your Kitchen from UKE

How long have you got before the kitchen needs to be removed– ideally you need at least 6 weeks to sell your kitchen.

The utilities, including gas and electricity will need to be capped off separately by qualified trades people before dismantling takes place.

Do you have a storage space for the old kitchen if it doesn’t sell before you need to install the new one?

If you are going to store in a garage or outbuilding the units will need to be kept off the ground on blocks of wood in a dry, protected environment.

Decide your sales price. If you are arranging the dismantle you can charge that bit more Remember your current kitchen is a financial liability. Rip and Skip charges tend to be around £500 for the average kitchen, so even if you don’t make thousands, you are still saving money.

 

Kate Watson-Smyth

The author Kate Watson-Smyth

I’m a journalist who writes about interiors mainly for The Financial Times but I have also written regularly for The Independent and The Daily Mail. My house has been in Living Etc, HeartHome and featured in The Wall Street Journal & Corriere della Sera. I also run an interior styling consultancy Mad About Your House. Welcome to my Mad House.

9 Comments

  1. Does this potentially ship to the continent (i.e., Italy)? If not, is there such an exchange in Europe?

  2. Yes!!! I purchased my cabinets from FB marketplace. Solid and ready for paint. Not only was I able to furnish my own kitchen and pantry I was able to do my sister’s as well. The cabinets were incredibly well made solid cherry transitional in style. I have furnished my entire home with reclaimed materials for a fraction of the price of new. Good job Kate!

  3. Ooh, fabulous! I can’t wait to see the new (old) kitchen take shape in your new home. I bought a second hand three year old Plain English kitchen for a quarter of the original sale price with top of the range appliances off the Used Kitchen Hub, they were super helpful too and arranged for a third party courier to quote for the removal and delivery who were also brilliant, I couldn’t recommend them highly enough. The kitchen is being installed next month into our new extension and I am so excited to see it take shape, my budget was IKEA and I have managed to get a beautiful painted in-frame handmade kitchen made in Norfolk that I can repaint whenever I get bored of the colour and will last my lifetime. Very happy bunny!

  4. The Used Kitchen Company is also very good.

    I have recently found “The Saleroom” website, which is dozens of auction houses with their full listings on show. You can register online to bid, or trek to the auction house if you see something special. They cover stuff in the thousands of pounds down to items in the tens of pounds. I’ve got my eye on two George Smith sofas, estimated at £1k each.

  5. We have bought an ex display designer kitchen from UKE in a very smart Copse Green colour with Dekton surfaces and all AEG appliances. We are delighted and have saved so much money for a great/unused kitchen. The kitchen retailer was very happy to add an island unit and other items to make the kitchen fit into our newly renovated kitchen. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly when we come to fit it next month.

  6. Where I have lived in the US sometimes you will see kitchen or bath displays being sold on Craig’s and ads with a stack of kitchen cabinets on FB marketplace, but nothing as helpful as a dedicated site. We had a very small galley kitchen with granite countertops when we took this house. I saw ads for used tops but decided to give them away instead just to get them gone quickly. A couple of young men took them home to redo their mother’s kitchen. We gave away some of the cabinets too, they went to a young couple slowly redoing their kitchen.

  7. What a brilliant scheme.
    But I have questions – have you sold your Habitat kitchen?
    And your new Italian place sounds intriguing! Two kitchens on different floors! Is it like Ed Milliband’s infamous 2nd kitchen? 🤣

  8. THIS IS BRILLIANT. So much excellent, detailed information, and above all, absolutely timely. Yessssssssss

  9. Such a fab idea! We bought a local second hand kitchen on gumtree for £800, which included a double oven, hob and extractor from good brands in very good condition. I figured that even if we couldn’t use the cabinets we would still be saving on appliances. The trickiest part for us was finding tradespeople who were happy to install it for us. Had a few non-repliers and a couple of very sniffy declines before we found “our” builders who no only agreed to do it but agreed with enthusiasm, having done the same for their own kitchen. The fact that Used Kitchen Company will do it all for you is a huge bonus! We love our second hand kitchen and it worked out about £3000 cheaper than even an ikea equivalent.

Comments are closed.