Decide what to buy | the Reevoo.com blog, featuring news on TVs, cameras, laptops, mp3 players & other gadgets, shopping tips and deals, reviews and more

We thought it was about time we carried on our rooms on a budget theme. This week, we’re looking at kitchens on a budget.

We’ve looked at everything you’d need for a kitchen – minus the cabinets themselves – and our budget kitchen comes in at £1114.

Obviously everybody’s kitchen will be different colours so we’ve gone for standard, yet sleek, black and stainless steel.

First up are the essentials, sink, oven, hob and fridge-freezer. 

We’ve gone for the attractive Astracast KO10RS sink. It’s £150, 98 cm wide and has a bowl size of 43 x 50 cm.

Everyone knows that if you want the best control over your cooking, the only way to go is gas. We’ve found this great stainless steel hob and oven pack from Baumatic. It’s £200 and has been rated 9.1/10 on Reevoo.

The top rated and best value for money fridge freezer we could find was the Indesit TA5S. It’s £240, has more fridge room than the large American-style fridges and it’s got some great reviews. Lots of owners are very impressed with its capacity, quality and value for money.

Ok, so far we’ve covered the essentials and we’re up to £590. Not bad for a fridge-freezer, oven, hob and sink?

Let’s move on to appliances.

The Breville JK123 kettle is simple to use and great value for money at £16. The matching Breville TT48 toaster is only £19. It has independent controls for each slice and a digital display.

This £51 Kenwood SJSS25 microwave has been rated 8.5/10 by the people who have bought it. Its capacity is 25 litres and it also has a grill function. One review reads “Easy to use, attractive, cost effective, efficient, fast, easy to wipe clean and maintain”.

For a dishwasher, we’ve gone for the Hotpoint FDL570. It’s £215 and it’s only 49 decibels so you won’t annoy the neighbours.

And finally, the washing machine. The A-rated Hotpoint WF321 is £223 and it has a larger than average load capacity of 6kg. Pam  from  Salisbury says “It is easy to use, not too noisy, nice big door and nice looking”.

So there you have it, a stylish kitchen for a little over £1000. Job done.

Are you in the process of re-doing your lounge? Have you just moved into your first place? For whatever reason, if you’re looking to kit out your living room but you’re a bit short of cash, you’ve come to the right place. This is the first in a series of posts about kitting out your rooms on a budget. As you might have guessed, we’re starting off with the lounge.

Everyone says the centre of a home is the kitchen but quite frankly we all spend far more time in front of the TV than the oven – unless you are a) a chef, b) a mum or c) you’ve just stepped out of the 19th century and you don’t have a TV.

So first up is the television - probably one of the most important items in your house. We’ve gone for a 32 incher as that’s the nation’s most popular size and fits in to most living rooms.

The Hitachi L32H01 is HD ready, has an LCD screen and comes in at £395. Quite reasonable and equipped with two scart sockets and two HDMI connections so you won’t be short of places to plug your consoles, DVD players and digital set top boxes into. This TV gets 9.2/10 on Reevoo. Janet, a reviewer from Derby says “It is good looking, easy to set up and use. The sound quality is excellent and it’s an expensive product at a very good price”.

Now you’ve got a TV, you’ll be needing a DVD player. We’ve gone for the Samsung DVD-R155 which is a very reasonable £104, especially as it’s a DVD recorder as well. You can also play all of your own-burned DVDs so those holiday videos can be ‘enjoyed’ over and over and over… The most popular comment left about this machine was that it was easy to use. 

If you’re worried about where to put your TV and DVD recorder, we’ve taken care of that as well.  This classy looking Alphason AP2-3/80 is £90 and scores 8.8/10. Reviewers loved the design and the fact that it was easy to build. It’s also black so it’ll match the TV and DVD player we picked out earlier.

Every lounge needs a HiFi system. The Philips MCB204 is very reasonable at £47. It has a DAB digital radio, MP3 playback and USB ports so that you can play all of your downloaded music too. Pretty good for under £50! And if you’re worried that the cheap stuff is never the best, this little machine has some cracking reviews. Check them out for yourself. 

You may already have one but if not, we’ve also picked out a cordless phone set. The Philips SE2453S/05 is £59. Included in that price are three handsets. You can store up to 100 phone numbers and you can wonder 300m from the base unit.

So there you have it. A lounge kitted out for under £700 (695 to be exact). If you already had a phone, you’re looking at £636 for some pretty decent kit.

We were thinking about adding a Nintendo Wii in there but you’d be adding £200 to your credit card and you are supposed to be on a budget after all…If you’d prefer to spend the money on a Wii and forego food for a month, you can check out Wii reviews here.