Finding an 'excellent' kitchen fitter

[Flymeaway4]

I often read on here that a big part of making your new kitchen perfect is to hire an excellent fitter. So, those of you who have, how did you find them and how did you know they were excellent beforehand? We're getting a Handmade Kitchens of Christchurch kitchen, so they don't offer fitting.

When we had our kitchen remodelled back in 2015 - we put a post on facebook asking for recommendations- we reviewed them and photos of their work plus get quotes (even went to see what they did for another client) and opted to go for them.

My advice is, don’t always go for the cheapest as they’ll often end up more expensive in the long run!

The heating engineer who has serviced my boiler for years recommended his friend. I had to wait for him as he was busy. But he did an excellent job.

We were fortunate that one of our neighbours had their kitchen done a few months before we planned to do our ours. We were able to look at the fitters' work first hand and hear how well they'd worked. We also had the added bonus of seeing/hearing the fitters' comings and goings so knew they were considerate to neighbours etc. The neighbours had found them via TrustPilot I think. Had we not been able to do that I think our local FB group would have been the starting place for our search.

Only use a recommended one, any kitchen purchased only looks great if it is fitted well. Good luck.

Definitely through recommendations. I have a HKOC and I found a carpenter to fit the units. There's lots of other trades that fit kitchens but personally I think you need to ensure you have a good carpenter. It's such a skill.

@Baxdream we have a good carpenter actually. So would you.recommend going with him over a specialist kitchen fitter? How did you sort the painting of your kitchen? We've had one quote of £4k for that!

It depends what you mean by'specialist kitchen fitter'. If you mean someone that fits off the shelf type kitchens then they're not a specialist for a wood kitchen. Just my opinion! Ideally you want a carpenter by trade that fits kitchens.

We painted ours ourselves as we'd run out of money at that point! It was hard graft but it looks amazing

Painted yourselves? That’s brave! Was it hard/technical to do? Or just long and tedious? How big is your kitchen? Think we are order 23 units and we both work full time, I’m just not sure it’s feasible! Equally, £4k is just too much!

We have an L kitchen with an island so relatively big. Not technical at all but yes long and tedious! We both work full time too but we took annual leave. Thankfully it was February- I don't think I could do it in the summer!