Fitting a kitchen ourselves? Are we mad?

[Tapista]

Hello
Looking for some expert advice, if I may?
DH and I are planning a kitchen. We have settled on a Howden's one, a not very pricey, standard white gloss stylee. We hope to have it in place before Christmas as DH's family are coming over from Spain then (no pressure, obviously!).

DH is fairly 'handy', has lots of DIY experience. Everything he does is 'sturdy', sometimes at the expense of beauty though

Would it be unrealistic for him to fit the kitchen cupboards/backboards/extractor/sink bits of the kitchen do you think? We would get people in to do the gas/proper plumbing stuff obviously. DH's mindset is 'how hard can it be', while I'm thinking 'why is kitchen fitting said to be an expert job?'.

Has anyone fitted a Howden's kitchen themselves? Or have any words of wisdom? Really don't want to cock this up, but money is tight...

I thought how dens only sold to trade so you can' t DIY it ( but I could be wrong )

We fitted our ikea kitchen ( well with my dm and ddad) mum and I built the unit and dad and I fitted them.

Hi Doris. I didn't explain it all, as it is a bit complicated! Yes, Howden's is trade only. DH's has a friend who has a trade account who is ordering the kitchen on our behalf. However he is going in for a back op in a couple of weeks which will take him out of action for several months.

DH was hoping that he could act as our guru, but I don't think it is fair to be asking him questions when he is recuperating, he's not really a best mate or anything, so it doesn't sit right with me. Hence we are going solo on this!

Not sure about Howden, but I did ours with IKEA units, which are decent quality for money IMO, and has a reasonable online design tool.

I'm not sure I'd say it's an 'expert' job. If you are just replacing units & appliances in roughly the same place, and you're not going to customise the units then I'd say it's well in a capable DIYers ability. Some parts - hanging any wall units really requires two people.

If you are planning to relocate appliances, sink etc then there will be more issues, delay, co-ordination with trades as pipes, electrics get shifted about. If so you should at least plan for it to be out of operation for a while.

We fitted ours and we had only basic DIY skills. Is not that hard, just common sense.

We fitted our Ikea kitchen ourselves. The only tools we didn't have was the tool for cutting out the sink on the worktop and we needed the gas cooker hooked up by a professional.

We will be doing a major renovation next year & my dad keeps saying fitting a kitchen would be grand to attempt ourselves but I'm big into cooking, baking etc so the kitchen is too important an area to me to risk it.
I'll be purchasing & having it fitted by a local independent company.

It really isn't difficult at all to do, just takes a bit of time to ensure everything level and secured. DH took about a week to fit ours in our old house, and then had the professionals do plumbing/worktop/gas etc.

Do make sure he lays the floor before putting in the base cupboards though.

I did spend quite a bit of time playing with putting large cardboard boxes around the room too, just to get a proper 3D effect of what it would look like which then made it easy when ordering the actual bits and pieces.

Doing those corner joints in the worktop is the hardest bit IME, worth getting a carpenter in to fit it as you need a router and special template to get it looking professional. Everything else is just assembly and being able to attach things securely to the wall. We fitted one in our first house with a bit of dad help.

On the DIY kitchens website there are some great fitting videos I think this is one

After the faff we are having with a kitchen fitter, I think apart from the electrics and plumbing, we could have fitted the units ourselves without problems and a dam site quicker than the 'experienced' fitter.

Ah, ok, this sounds positive then. It isn't lunacy to think we can do (most of it) ourselves? We will get people in for gas/plumbing and electrics, but aisde from that the tricky bit is worktop cutting then? Do you reckon floor (laminate) first or units first?

I fitted a kitchen in my very first house (with the help of my mum). We did all of the plumbing and work too cutting and only paid a professional to connect the gas hob and fit an electrical socket for the oven. It looked okay but it took longer than if I had paid a professional. The tiling wasn't great though and I should paid a professional for that.

Work too = worktop.

Floor first. Buy proper tool thingy for work top cutting...so it doesn't crack the surface or something.

Just get someone in for gas/electric.

You can hire worktop corner templates, routers etc from HSS. It is worth investing in a few key tools, clamps etc, we bought a cheap jigsaw from Screwfix for cutting out the hole for the sink. Also there tend to be a lot of mitred corners on cornices etc which really you need a mitre saw to do neatly. Gloss finish isn't very forgiving.

It does take longer doing it yourself but at least you get exactly what you want, where you want it. Having said that it's worth getting some A3 graph paper and drawing a scale plan to work from, helps avoid arguments , there is information on the internet as to standard setting out for height of units etc.

Even if you don't go with IKEA, you might want to try:

The online tool to test some layouts: ttp://www.ikea.com/ms/en_GB/rooms_ideas/kitchen_howto/EU/plan_your_kitchen_in_3d.html?icid=gb|iba|20140527|129

Most kitchens are now based around 60cm appliances, with base cabinets in 40/50/80cm widths and shallow (~37cm) and deep (60cm) depths. So playing with this will give you some ideas of the possibilities with stock units.

The IKEA planning guide also touches on standard things like the sink/cooker/fridge 'triangle': www.ikea.com/ms/en_GB/pdf/metod/planning_guide_2014.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_work_triangle

One other comment. We have IKEA wooden worktops. Quite nice but was a lot of effort to get them properly oiled, so it's penetrated and protected wood. This has kept them in good condition but after 3 years they need a sand and re-oil.

If redoing I'd go for something more resilient (artificial marble() or if was feeling very wealthy and staying in house long time something like Corian: www.dupont.co.uk/products-and-services/construction-materials/surface-design-materials/brands/corian-solid-surfaces.html

However solid wood or laminates are the only practical option to cut yourself.

I'm going to go against the grain and say yes, you are mad. We've just done it and my H had been "I'm not paying anyone else to do it, I'm perfectly capable" but I insisted we use a joiner. I knew that it would cause rows between us if everything wasn't properly aligned, if the finish wasn't good etc. H has begrudgingly acknowledged that it was the right decision. We would have been without a kitchen for longer and I'd have been less pleased with the overall result because it wouldn't have been quite perfect - like your H, my H is very competent and it would have been done and would have been fine, but for the sake of paying a joiner for 4 days work, it was well worth it. To be fair though, the layout is completely different, we've had quite a few integrated appliances, the worktop needed quite a few cutouts etc and we've "wrapped" the units in worktop to give it a kind of boxed in look. My H would not have been able to do that.