01 — Detail
The kitchen day, hour by hour.
We start by unpacking and counting: every box against the delivery note, so that a missing cabinet is known at eight in the morning and not at four in the afternoon. Then the suspension rail goes on the wall, level, measured from the highest point of the floor. The wall units follow, unless there is a tall unit at the end of the run, because that one goes up first. By the coffee break the base units stand on their adjustable feet and the laser has gone round them. Around midday the worktop arrives: cutting to length, marking out the openings, sawing, sealing the cut edges. The afternoon is for the appliances, the fronts and the drawers. At the end of the day the plinths and filler panels go on and every door is adjusted, because doors only sit right once the rest is standing.
02 — Detail
The measurements the whole kitchen rests on.
Everything starts at the highest point of the floor, because that is where we measure from. The lower suspension rail hangs at 82 centimetres if your plinth is 8 centimetres and at 85 centimetres with an 11 centimetre plinth, measured at the underside of the rail. If you want to check it yourself: cabinet height plus leg height minus 6. The upper rail sets the space between worktop and wall unit, and that is 60 centimetres. Between the lower and the upper rail there is 120 centimetres at a kitchen height of 208, 140 at 228 and 160 at 248. Those figures are not negotiable, and they are precisely why a kitchen that looks like one straight line really is one straight line.
03 — Detail
Why there is no rate card here.
Eight base units with a laminate worktop and one oven is a day's work. Those same eight cabinets with a wall of tall units, an island, three built-in appliances and four filler panels against a wall that is square nowhere is a different job, with exactly the same number of cabinets. Publish one rate for both and you correct it on the day itself, which is the conversation nobody wants to have once the worktop is down. What does determine the price we can name cabinet by cabinet: how many base, wall and tall units, how many drawers, whether there is a corner run or an island, how many built-in appliances, which worktop you chose and how many cut-outs it needs, how many filler panels your walls call for, what the cabinets will hang on (brick, concrete, aerated concrete or plasterboard), whether the room is ready, and which floor you live on and whether there is a lift. Send us your plan from the IKEA Kitchen Planner or your order confirmation, with photographs of the wall, the corner and the meter cupboard. We calculate a fixed amount from that, and that amount holds.
04 — Detail
What you have ready before we arrive.
The floor laid, the tiles on and the plaster dry, because a kitchen standing on a floor that still has to be laid will have to come out again. Water and electrics in the position the kitchen plan specifies. The boxes indoors in one room rather than in the garage, and the worktop lying flat at room temperature in normal humidity. And the most important line comes from IKEA's own guide: do not strip out your old kitchen until you have every part and appliance for the new one. A single back-order for a single cabinet can take days, and for all that time you have no kitchen.
05 — Detail
Where the assembly stops.
We are fitters, not installers, and that difference is not wordplay. We place your appliance, align it, fix it and keep clear the ventilation space the manufacturer prescribes. We connect it if there is something to plug into: an existing socket, or an existing three-phase cooker outlet that takes a hob with a plug on it. If there is no plug, and that happens more often than people expect because IKEA states itself that not all of its appliances are supplied with a plug or cable, then it is a hard-wired connection and that is work for an electrician, on a dedicated cooker circuit to NEN 1010. Gas we do not do. Connecting a gas hob or gas cooker to the supply is always left to a certified installer. Water we connect to existing inlets; new pipework is for a plumber.
06 — Detail
A wall that is straight nowhere.
In a pre-war house nothing is square, and that is no problem as long as you know where you measure from. We first find the highest point of the floor with the cross-line laser, and that is where the measurement comes from. Whatever the floor drops away after that we pick up with the adjustable feet, and their range is limited: if your floor falls away a long way, you hear that in advance and not once the cabinets are standing. A bulging wall we take up with packers behind the rail, so the rail stays dead straight even where the wall is not. The gap that then remains between the last cabinet and the wall we cover with a filler panel, and we do not cut that straight but scribe it: a block of wood flat against the wall, a pencil held against it, and the block slid from top to bottom along the panel. The shape of your wall is then on the panel and we cut that line. That is the difference between a five millimetre gap filled with sealant and a joint you cannot see.
07 — Detail
What is in the toolbox.
Cross-line laser, cordless driver with adjustable clutch and depth stop, pilot-hole set for every wall type, plunge saw on a guide rail for the worktop, fine-tooth hand saw for the filler panels, 35 millimetre hole saw for the mixer tap. For MAXIMERA drawers we carry the IKEA adjustment keys. Nothing stays manual when a machine can do it more accurately.
08 — Detail
What we leave behind.
A working kitchen, every cabinet level, drawers soft-close, doors flush to the frame. Packaging, polystyrene and stray screws are gone. On the worktop you will find a short maintenance note: which bolts to retighten in six months, and which UTRUSTA hinge to take up a turn if a door starts to drop.
