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Buying and fitting

You have bought the kitchen. What does fitting it actually involve?

Buying the kitchen and hiring the fitting separately is a perfectly good way to do it. These are the parts that catch people out, mostly before anybody turns up.

The Renovation Crew3 min read
A tiler cutting a tile to size on a workbench, with a spirit level laid across the worktop

The short version

  • Check the design before you order, not after. A unit that will not open past a wall is cheap to fix on paper and expensive on delivery day.
  • Worktops are templated after the units are fitted, and stone takes about a week to come back. That gap is why a kitchen is three weeks, not one.
  • Appliances are usually the customer's to buy. An integrated one needs a door to match the range, and a new induction hob usually needs its own circuit.
  • Count the delivery against the order the day it arrives, while the lorry is still the supplier's problem.

Have the design checked before you order

Most kitchen designs are produced by the retailer selling the units, which is fine, and they are produced to a plan rather than to your actual walls, which is where the trouble starts.

The things worth having a fitter look for are dull and expensive: a door or drawer that fouls a wall, a return or a radiator; a worktop run that needs a joint in an awkward place; an appliance housing that does not suit the appliance you have actually bought; services that are not where the plan assumes.

All of those are a pencil line before you order and a delay afterwards.

What a fitting-only job covers

Broadly, everything from the delivery to the working kitchen. The product itself, its delivery and anything missing or damaged in the order stay with you and the retailer, which is why the count on delivery day matters.

  • Strip-out of the old kitchen and waste removal
  • Fitting and scribing units to walls that are never square
  • Worktop templating, fitting and sealing
  • Sink, tap and appliance installation and connection
  • Plumbing and electrical alterations to existing positions
  • Plastering and making good where the old units were
  • Splashback and flooring

Send us the design before you order it and we will tell you what to change.

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Why the worktop decides the timeline

Stone worktops are templated after the units are in, because that is the only point at which the real measurements exist. The template goes off, and the stone comes back about a week later.

That gap is the honest reason a kitchen takes three weeks rather than one, and it is worth planning for: a temporary worktop, a kettle point and access to a sink make the difference between an inconvenient fortnight and a miserable one.

Anyone promising a finished kitchen in a week is either fitting laminate, which goes in the same day, or has not templated stone before.

Appliances, and the two things that catch people

An integrated appliance needs a door to match the range you have chosen, and those doors are ordered with the kitchen rather than with the appliance. It is a common and annoying omission.

And a new induction hob usually needs its own circuit back to the consumer unit, rather than the spur the old gas hob's ignition was on. Worth checking early, because it is an electrician's morning rather than a surprise on fitting day.

Send us the design before you order it and we will tell you what to change.

We survey for free, in your home, and put one written fixed price in front of you. No showroom visit and no sales appointment.

Book a free surveyKitchen Renovation

Questions people ask

Can I buy a kitchen from anywhere and have it fitted?

In most cases, yes. Some ranges are trade-only, so they have to be ordered through a fitter's account rather than bought directly, and some retailers sell and install as a package rather than supplying to other fitters. Ask before you get too far into a design, because it changes how the job is bought rather than how it is built.

Should I check the delivery myself?

Yes, on the day, against the order. Missing or damaged items are between you and the retailer, and they are far easier to resolve while the delivery is fresh than a fortnight later when a fitter finds the gap mid-installation.

How long should I be without a kitchen?

About three weeks for a standard fit, most of which is the worktop templating gap. Wherever the layout allows it, a temporary worktop and a working sink make that period bearable, and the run containing the sink usually goes back first for exactly that reason.

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