Dear Mrs Iol
Thanks for your reply. Would be interested to hear how you get on in January. We've done it the other way around i.e. I went to Germany last October and visited several kitchen shops and got quotes and plans (no charge for these) and when I'd identified the one I wanted then I sent them to an Irish supplier of the same kitchen and got a quote. If you're interested got a good quote from an Irish shipper for moving the kitchen from Germany to Ireland for about Euro1,200. Also interested in hearing about the light fitting supplier in Italy. We're looking into getting tiles from Italy as I really think the price of tiles in Ireland is often ridiculous.
Regarding the other posts on the prices mentioned for kitchens we will not be paying Euro40,000 for our kitchen but hopefully about half that for everything. However, I do think some other factors have to be taken into account when putting a price on a kitchen. In our case, I am a SAHM with 4 young children and feel our kitchen is going to get a lot of wear and tear; I enjoy cooking and believe in slow food and not fast food - all our food is cooked from fresh so I spent a lot of time in our kitchen, in fact I am often there up to 8 or 9 at night. We have planned our house that the kitchen is the heart of our home and that we will do a lot of entertaining there, by that I mean having our friends with their kids over for dinner or lunch and want it designed that it can accommodate all. Another thing I have noticed is that in a lot of people in Ireland spend very little on their kitchen whereas I really believe that it deserves a spend in proportion to what they spend on the rest of their house. For example, we are currently renting a house which is 4 years old and the kitchen in it is so crap - badly designed and badly made. We're had to repair two of the doors and the cutlery drawer is hanging on by a thread. Not great for a kitchen that's only four years old in my opinion.