Kitchens and bathrooms

A kitchen or bathroom is a building job with a fitted furniture job on the end of it. Most of what determines whether it turns out well happens before a single unit goes in, and it happens inside the walls and under the floor.

Why we strip back to the structure

Fitting new units onto old walls, old floors and old services is how you end up with a kitchen that looks right for eighteen months. We take rooms back to brick and joist and work forward from there.

That means checking the floor is level and sound before anything is set out, renewing the plumbing rather than teeing off whatever is there, and running new circuits from the board instead of extending a ring that was never designed for an induction hob. Walls get replastered, not patched. It costs more at the start and it is the reason the job lasts.

Where kitchens and bathrooms go wrong

Ventilation. Most bathroom problems people blame on damp are really an extraction problem. An extractor fan has to be sized for the room and it has to actually vent outside, not into a loft void.

Tanking. A wet room or a level-access shower needs the floor and walls tanked properly before tiling. Done right it is invisible forever. Done badly it appears on the ceiling below about a year later.

Falls and levels. Water goes where the floor sends it. Getting the fall to the waste right is unglamorous and it is the difference between a shower that drains and one that pools.

Load. Stone and porcelain are heavy. A large-format floor or a stone worktop needs a floor that can carry it and a substrate that will not flex, or the tiles crack along the joists.

What is included

Strip-out and disposal, any structural alterations, first fix plumbing and electrics, plastering, tiling, flooring, the fitting itself, second fix, and decoration. Gas and electrical work is certificated. We can supply the units or fit what you have bought, and we will say honestly which of the two works out better on a given job.

If you are moving a kitchen to a different room, or opening it into the garden, that becomes an extension or a structural job and we will price it as one.

How long you are without it

We will give you a programme with the quote, and we work to it. Bathrooms are the harder disruption because most houses only have the one, so where that is the case we sequence the work to keep it out of use for as short a stretch as possible and we tell you in advance which days those are.