I can just imagine how poor the quality of your amateur £300 kitchen was now (it definitely wouldn’t meet the industry standards here in Australia, so you certainly would’ve run into issues if and when you tried to sell the property)… I’m sure you were very happy you saved yourself some money and were very proud of your work. Generally when people are proud of their work they take photos, have you got any to share (I am particularly interested in close ups of joints etc)? I’d love to share them with my dad, being a carpenter for 40 years I know he’d get a laugh out of it, and enjoy criticising your work, since you think it’s so easy, and seem to look down on tradesman.
My dad built the first family home in New Zealand before we moved to Australia, which took him 2-2 and a half years in his early to mid 20’s in the 1980s… He had 2 jobs during this period, during the day he did his carpentry/building work for his employer, we only had one car so he would push bike to and from work. After work, he would work on building our home, and would often sleep at the work site. In the morning he would wake up at around 4am, to push bike to an orchard to pick fruit, before starting his regular day job.
A little over a decade ago, dad bought a property for just over au$400000 up the north coast about an hour and a half out of Sydney. In his spare time when he wasn’t working, he spent between 1-2 years travelling to and from Sydney up there to fully renovate it… It was originally intended to be his and his wives new home, it was for a couple of years, but they didn’t like some of the neighbours, so they moved again. When they sold it, the people doing the inspection reports for sale said that his work was impeccable. The home was sold for just under 1 million Australian.
After reading your kitchen situation bart7796, I think understand perfectly now, you are one of those type of people that would be such a difficult nightmare customer to every business you deal with, where you’re often thought of as your money not being worth the time, effort and headache… And because nobody likes to be around you, you would definitely have less options when it comes to people being willing to take on your work, so any complaints about your kitchen installer that gave you that quote, likely was a reflection of your own doing, because in a lot crappy tradesman that are desperate for work would want to be hired by you.