New kitchen questions

[GinAndTings]

Hi all,

Just moved into new home. I want to do the kitchen up, the cooker needs to be moved from one side of the wall to the other - after I have bricked up the back door.

Can I get companies to come and rip out the kitchen, place the cooker where needed and then install new kitchen - or do I need to do bit by bit and hire separately?

I have toddler twins so it wont be easy but I don't know where to start!

You can def get companies that will do everything you need but if you prefer to project manage it yourself you can do that too! We did a massive renovation and we decided to manage a lot of bits ourselves but we got a company called Rosewood to do our kitchen and utility rooms and they did everything for us as it was a newly built extension. They were fab, have since recommended them to others and everyone’s been really happy! In terms of quality they are well above the likes of Howdens, Wren etc and the service is so much better too (they’re independent)! Maybe give them a shout? www.rosewoodkitchens.co.uk
Good luck!

A decent kitchen company would be able to do the whole job. They’ll have contractors they can employ to do any building work.

we bought our kitchen online and chose to sort trades out separately. Had the place stripped, and replaced a door with a window. Had plasterer in and electrician then kitchen fitter, so took about a month all in. (plasterer did the render outside too.)
personally i think we saved money by shopping around and doin it this way. not sure we would had we gone just to one place to do it all, but that way might have been quicker.

We did exactly as you are planning.

I used an independent kitchen company who arranged the separate tradesmen. They were useless in the end but in theory it worked like this:

Kitchen fitters came in and ripped out old kitchen.
Gas engineer removed old cooker, made old gas line defunct and installed new gas line where new cooker was going to go.
Electrician rewired whole kitchen including direct line for new cooker (as we have duel fuel)
Builder came in, blocked up door, plastered everywhere
Fitters fitted new kitchen
Gas and electric men came back to hard wire the new oven in

Hope this helps.

A kitchen company will be able to do it all for you but you will pay a premium for this - a combination of their time/involvement in project managing it all, risk (eg even their own tradesmen can let them down on occasion sometimes through no fault of their own eg labourers not turning up etc) and, frankly, greed, will dictate the level of premium.

Going it alone isn’t hard but you do need to have time, have an understanding of what trades are needed and be very clear as to who is responsible for delivering what and where each trade’s responsibility starts and ends (so that they quote and deliver accordingly) (this is quite apart from the order of works which Eminybob has pretty much nailed above). They may also be a need to involve building control in some instances.

It can be stressful, annoying etc but it’s also rewarding and if managed well will save you (through your work) the premium you’d otherwise pay for having someone else responsible for delivering the project.