Installing new kitchen with no DIY knowledge

stuart45

Looks really good. There is a lot of satisfaction making something from odds and ends, even if you have the money to get someone in and pay out for all new.

Troytempest

I would wait. I am not a great DIYer but probably more idea than you might have and I would not attempt it.

You are bound to run into electrical / plumbing issues that you cannot afford to get very wrong. If you get a fitter, maybe help him / her with some labouring as a learning exercise.

Rosa_Damascena

maisie_cat said:

It really does depend on the extent of the work, ranging from a simple like for like swap to a new layout, new electrics, flooring and tiling.
We fitted the kitchen in our last house, I refuse to pay £30k, the carcasses were mostly from handmade kitchens direct in Christchurch and the worktops from worktop-express. I made extra cabinets later from scratch once I'd seen how the HKD cabinets were made. In true MSE fashion that cooker hood was £30 and the light fitting £5, the sink was free and the high shelves were planed scaffold boards. 
Things we hadn't done before were learned mostly from youtube and hubby did a couple of courses.
The huge savings from doing it ourselves paid for hubbys part P & plastering courses as well a loads of tools that we still have.
When we moved into that house the kitchen was disgusting, so I ripped the kitchen out while hubby was at work, it enabled us to see what was there and we created a temporary kitchen using IKEA freestanding units. 
If the current kitchen is so awful that may be an option, gives a clean slate for when you can get a fitter and will probably save some money.

£30k to fit a kitchen is TTP big time. Your kitchen is lovely, though.

FreeBear

Robin9 said: Fitting a kitchen is not just about assembling units - plumbing, electrics, plastering ?, tiling .............

Assembling flat pack units is easy enough with a few basic tools. Sometimes, they need modifying for various reasons (wall pier in the way or some plumbing sticking out too far). If your walls are not straight, the worktop will need to be scribed to fit, and doing a neat job of any cut outs is not easy.

On the subject of electrics, you need to know where live cables are before drilling holes in the walls. Whilst there are proscribed "safe zones" where cables should be located, it is not uncommon to find wires outside these zones. A cautionary tale - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3735928.stm

NeverTooLate

If you're doing it yourself I would say pay extra for ready made cabinets rather than flat pack. You will remove the first stage of complexity by making sure that the cabinets are all straight & true before you start.

phoebe1989seb

We've fitted our own kitchens (think we've done six at various homes over the years) and have always been delighted with the results. We have progressed from Magnet/similar in our first two houses, through a couple of independent joinery companies to Handmade Kitchens of Christchurch most recently and the quality of the latter few has been markedly better. Iirc we only ever bought one flat pack kitchen and that was awful to fit (not to mention the sheer quantity of missing components). I remember my late dad - a retired engineer - helped with the first one as he'd fitted his own and we learned loads from him.

Like Maisie, we have picked up many skills along the way and similarly built our own matching cabinets when HKOC had too long a lead time to get additional ones.....

But....DH is very handy (and currently has his own small renovations/building co), we both have design backgrounds and own all the right tools, lol!

It does depend a lot on your level of abilities and I'd agree with Doozer that a bad fitter can make a less than high end kitchen look great and vice versa 😉

DS - who is blessed with being both academic and hands on - constructed his fully fitted kitchen from old pine cupboards topped with slate worktops he cut himself 😃 However, he has uni friends that can't put up a shelf. Obviously one can learn from scratch, but some people are just not cut out for DIY!

If it's only a short wait for a competent fitter and you don't feel confident enough, perhaps don't even attempt it....or at least buy ready constructed cabinets.

Gavin83

maisie_cat said:

The huge savings from doing it ourselves paid for hubbys part P & plastering courses as well a loads of tools that we still have.

Out of interest how long were the courses and where did he do them, a local college? I've been looking at doing similar and I've struggled to find anything. I don't want to do it professionally and the courses that last several years are definitely overkill but just something would help.

Also I thought for Part P you had to register with a relevant body (about £500 a year I think) and have several years of experience to do so?

warwick2001

If you're just fitting units and tiling, then have a go. As long as you don't cut stuff up, you can always start again if things don't go as expected.

If you need to move electric/gas/water then my advice?  Leave it to the pro's. Oh, and get the worktop fitted professionally. I had a go with a 3m run with one joint (L-shaped). I had to re-buy the worktop as I made a total ars3 of it

stuart45

warwick2001 said:

 Oh, and get the worktop fitted professionally. I had a go with a 3m run with one joint (L-shaped). I had to re-buy the worktop as I made a total ars3 of it

Doing the mitre on a work top is probably the hardest bit for DIY. Brave to take it on though.

onomatopoeia99

Doozergirl said:

I agree with Robin9.  It's better to wait.  Much of the perceived quality of a kitchen is in the fitting. 

When I've known people fit their own kitchens over the years, they've never lasted as long as one fitted properly by a professional.   Our old kitchen was just a simple Ikea one and it was getting compliments after 10 years.  Friends who fitted their own had long fallen apart.  

Do it right, do it once.  

 

I fitted the kitchen at my old house (Homebase flat pack so I assembled all the units as well) and 13 years later when I moved out it was still there, everything opened and closed as it was supposed to and nothing had fallen apart.  Fitted the kitchen in this house as well, most of it 7 years ago though this year I rejigged the wall units in one corner to add a couple that I couldn't install orginally and it's all still as it should be.

It's all very securely fitted and completely over-engineered (like most things I do) so I am very much a "Do it right, do it once" person though.