What Separates a Good Kitchen From an Expensive One
Two kitchens can carry the same price tag and be completely different pieces of work. The difference is rarely the doors you can see. It is in the preparation underneath, the order the trades arrive in, and whether anyone checked the room before the units were ordered.
What a full kitchen remodel involves
A complete kitchen remodel is several trades stacked into a short window. The existing units come out, along with tiling, flooring and often a section of plaster. Then the room is assessed properly for the first time, because walls that were hidden behind cupboards are usually the ones that need attention. Plumbing waste runs and electrical circuits are altered to suit the new layout, the walls are made good, and only then does anything get fixed in place.
Smaller projects work differently. Replacing doors and worktops on sound carcasses, or swapping a hob and extractor, can be done in days rather than weeks and without touching the services. We are happy to quote either, and we will tell you honestly when a partial refit is the better use of your money.
Cabinets, worktops and what they cost to run
Carcass construction matters more than door finish. A rigid-built unit arrives assembled and square, and it holds that shape when a stone worktop is sitting on it. Flat-pack can be perfectly serviceable in a low-use kitchen, but it relies entirely on the quality of assembly. We will specify either, provided you know which one you are buying.
Worktops are where budgets move fastest. Laminate is forgiving and cheap to replace. Solid timber needs oiling and will move with humidity. Quartz and granite are templated after installation and cost more up front, but they tolerate heat and water in a way the alternatives do not. We price two or three options against the same layout so the comparison is real.
Sequencing and why it decides your timeline
Kitchen work has a fixed order and very little slack in it. Electrics and plumbing must be moved before plastering. Plastering must dry before units go on. Units must be fixed and levelled before a worktop can be templated, and stone templating adds a wait of several working days before the piece arrives. Skip a step or start one early and the delay lands at the end, not the beginning.
This is why we publish a programme rather than a duration. You will know which week the strip-out happens, which day the template is taken, and when the appliances are connected. If a supplier slips, you hear about it from us before you notice it yourself.
Working in an occupied home
Losing a kitchen is disruptive in a way that losing a spare room is not. We plan around that. Dust barriers go up at the room threshold, floors along the route in are protected, and we set up a temporary sink and a spot for the kettle and microwave wherever the layout allows it.
Older houses add their own complications. Floors that fall away towards an outside wall, plaster that will not take a fixing, and pipework routed in ways nobody would choose today. We survey for these before quoting, because an estimate that assumes a square, level room is not an estimate you can rely on.
How we price kitchen work
Our quotes separate labour from materials and name the specification: the cabinet range, the carcass type, the worktop material and thickness, the appliance models. That way you can substitute one item without the whole price becoming a negotiation, and you can compare us against another contractor on equal terms.
Most kitchens are quoted as a fixed price against an agreed layout. Where something genuinely cannot be seen until the old units come out, such as the condition of a wall or a floor, we say so in writing beforehand and agree a rate for it rather than presenting it as a surprise halfway through.