Browse Forums Kitchen Appliances 1 Aug 10, 2012 6:30 pm We recently bought a house and decided to remodel the thing almost completely, moving the kitchen, knocking down walls, installing an ensuite, moving the laundry to the garage (which will be a studio and laundry now), etc. So our new kitchen was a blank canvas. Open season(budget constraints permitting!!) on everything. My partner has an interior design professional background, so she's VERY sure what look she wants to create everywhere. In the kitchen it's modern, clean (and it's open plan to meals and living, with 6m wide sliding doors 2.4m high all across the back onto the outdoor entertaining!). I found the advice on this forum informative and useful, but still leaving lots of missing pieces of the jigsaw. Maybe our little story will fill in a few pieces and be useful in some way. As well as this forum, I've done the magazine review thing, I've taken from my own past experience (both here in WA for a previous kitchen reno and in the UK for two others), I've taken advice from our builder, the kitchen guy and I think maybe the postie stuck his twopenneth worth in at one point..... Ultimately I decided that all appliances would be sourced from Harvey Norman - I wanted their 500 day deal and I wanted to have some bargaining power on price. The Osborne park store has a great kitchen section with some very knowledgeable and helpful staff who never lost patience with my multiple visits, questions, challenges and price bartering! (At least they never let on, but they were probably glad to see my signature finally on the order...) My partner wanted minimal visibility of appliances, so integrated fridge, freezer, dishwasher. Undermount sink. Cooktop had to be gas, so my love of induction was off the agenda (saved me a packet, though!). The integrated fridge and freezer were a major challenge. In the UK, this has been very common for a very long time, so loads of choice. In Australia, until fairly recently the only choices were Miele (bloody expensive) and Liebeheir (holy cow, what price????). Then Siemens came to the party (made the others look cheap!). After much investigation, I discovered that supposedly Electrolux, Ariston and LG also did fully integrated models. Finding anyone who admitted to selling an Ariston integrated unit was impossible, Harvey did not have the LG. However, they did have both Electrolux on display. Furthermore, they were selling off the display freezer at $1,000 off, so problem solved. Just to clarify, the Electrolux models are proper fully integrated units with door-on-door, not slider rubbish. Total outlay for both units $4K. The dishwasher should have been easy. I wanted a Bosch. This forum generally agrees Bosch is best. Bosch are mid-priced. However, my partner is a short-ass. So she designed the kitchen to have a lower than normal bench height (coz she could!). This meant that the Bosch integrated units were too tall. Semi-integrated would fit, but this was not "the look" she wanted to achieve. The option offered was Miele as the only one to fit, which meant more money, no negotiation on price (fixed by miele on pain of retailer ex-communication!) AND quite a few people had surprisingly told me that they were not happy with their Miele dishwashers.... The answer came when we chose the cooktop. There were only two 900mm gas cooktops we could find that had the look she wanted. One was a Neff at $3K and the other an Electrolux at $1600. Job done! We were going to go with the Electrolux double built-in oven, but noticed it did not actually match the cooktop . Rescue came in the form of an AEG double oven (I know it's actually still Electrolux, but it's the snob version - a bit like a Lexus instead of a Toyota.) which looks very schmick and suited the budget at under $3K. having chosen these, we looked at the Electrolux brochure and I noticed they did an integrated dishwasher that would fit for a very respectable $1200 - it had all the functions and came with a seal of approval from the store staff. Bingo! She wanted a Franke or Abbey undermount 900mm wide single sink with a removable spout mixer tap and all the fancy accessories. $2500? For a sink and tap? Bog off!! So we also had to find an extractor hood. She wanted an in-cupboard integrated unit. She is Anglo-Indian, so lots of smelly cooking, so extraction efficiency important. Motor in roof to keep the noise down too. This forum seemed to favour Sweigen, but expensive for the extraction rate. Then the lady in the store came to the rescue. She assured us that the Blanco was our best option. Great extraction rate (1,000m3) and everything else we wanted for a decent price (just over a grand). That's how we got our hands on another brochure and the answer to my sink & tap dilemma. Blanco did exactly what she wanted for a total of $1300 all in. Fabulous!! We nearly got derailed with a special Smeg offer (that sounds so disgusting to a Pom brought up on Red Dwarf.....) that HN were having on the weekend we went to place our order. However, the overwhelming advice (more like a stampede going "Noooooo, don't do it!") was that Smeg was a bad choice and our Electrolux/AEG choices were way superior. This was based on warranty claims and customer complaints, apparently. Advice taken. Now awaiting delivery. The specifics for those who'd like to know: Cooktop - Electrolux EHGC97BS $1600 Oven - AEG Double Oven (haven't got details to hand) $2900 Dishwasher - Electrolux ESL67040R $1200 Freezer - Electrolux EFM3001WC-X $1600 Fridge - Electrolux ERM3701WC-X $2200 Rangehood - Blanco RUL90X $1200 Sink - Blanco ZEROX700UK5 $900 Tap - Blanco BT637P $400 Re: The Appliances We've Chosen and Why 2Aug 11, 2012 4:34 pm Did you shop around at all? We choose all of our appliances first and then took our list to 5 different companies for a quote, in the end we got them from 3 separate places; Bing Lee, Winnings and Appliances Online. At Harvey Norman I just didn't find they had enough variety of brands on display to test out and their quote for both each single item and all packaged together was higher than the others. Having said that maybe the Harvey Norman you went to was bigger and more accommodating. The Appliances We've Chosen and Why 3Aug 11, 2012 5:05 pm Thanks for sharing mark. We had intended in reusing our blanco appliances (induction cooktop, 2 MF ovens, dishwasher) in our new build. However we now think we will want new. Ours are only 4 years I'd and working perfectly fine, but the attraction of having everything new and schmick is getting a bit much. We have been looking at various brands, Miele, Neff, Asko Aeg, Bosch. We are leaning towards Bosch at the moment. We have Bosch washer and condenser dryer and they have been great. Most we read about Bosch on here and elsewhere is positive and it seems a good price point for us. I wasn't to interested in undermount range and integrated dishwasher until I saw them in people's kitchens, certainly provide a clean look. The Rangehood you went with, is that extraction rate nett? If that is it sounds like a great option. We cook very similar to what you have described so that might be good option, but for $1200 I think you could get Whispair external motor model which from everything I read are very good also. Let us know how they perform when you get them. My Knock down and Rebuild thread viewtopic.php?f=31&t=54685 Our Building Blog http://ourknockdownrebuild.blogspot.com.au/ Re: The Appliances We've Chosen and Why 4Aug 22, 2012 9:47 pm How much does it cost to get a normal double bowl sink on 40mm ceaserstone replaced by a similar size undermount double bowl sink? Any brand will do. I have a Blanco Tipo 8S at the moment. That sucks! Hope it all works out. Good to move away from steel anyway for all your reasons, but it's also thermally poor. 16 17855 Hi All, I just wanted to close this topic out with an update. So we ended up agreeing to a number with the insurance company, and after an extensive amount of hand… 8 23392 A Sabco spin mop, minimal moisture, not very regularly. I was told these hybrids are water resistant 🤷♀️ 2 7634 |