Kitchen fitting across Teesside
A kitchen is the one room where six trades work in a fixed order and none of them can be brought forward to fill a gap. Joinery, plumbing, electrics, gas, tiling and decorating each wait on the one before. Most of what goes wrong on a kitchen installation is not poor workmanship. It is a trade turning up on the wrong day, or a worktop that could not be measured because the units it sits on were still in the van.
We are a multi-trade firm working out of Middlesbrough TS3, with our own kitchen fitters, Teesside-wide rather than tied to one town: Middlesbrough, Stockton, Thornaby, Billingham, Yarm, Redcar, Guisborough, Hartlepool and the villages in between. Every trade the room needs sits inside the same business, so the sequence is one person's responsibility instead of a negotiation between four diaries.
How the sequence actually runs
Each stage is held in place by what it physically depends on. Units cannot be levelled until the first fix is buried in the walls. The worktop cannot be measured until the units are standing exactly where they will finish. Tiling cannot start until the worktop is down and sealed. Once you can see those dependencies, a kitchen schedule reads as logic rather than as delay.
| Stage | What it waits on | What it holds up |
|---|---|---|
| Survey and measure | The room as built, not the supplier's drawing | Everything after it |
| Delivery check | The boxes arriving with time left to chase shortages | Strip-out |
| Gas cap-off | A Gas Safe engineer attending first | Strip-out |
| Strip-out and disposal | A licensed route for the waste | First fix |
| First fix | The final layout being genuinely settled | Plaster and units |
| Making good | Chases, holes and pipe boxing finished | Base units |
| Base units | Levels taken off the floor, not the old worktop | The template |
| Worktop template | Units fixed in their final position | The worktop |
| Worktop fit | Fabrication time on stone and composite | Sink, hob, tiling |
| Second fix | Cut-outs done and appliances on site | Handover |
| Tiling and decoration | Everything wet being finished | Nothing |
Two rows cause nearly all the disappointment. A kitchen arrives as dozens of separately picked items, so one missing cornice or one damaged door can stop a fitting day cold, which is why the boxes want checking against the plan while there is still time to get a replacement sent. And the worktop template cannot be taken early, no matter how much everyone would like it to be.
What the job is, and how long it takes
Four shapes cover nearly every kitchen we fit. The durations are working days on site and they do not vary by town, which is exactly why they are stated here once rather than repeated on every location page.
| Job | What changes | Typical time on site |
|---|---|---|
| Like-for-like replacement | Units, worktop and appliances in existing positions | 5–7 working days |
| New layout, same room | Sink, hob or appliances move; new supply, waste and circuits | 7–10 working days |
| Knock-through or extension | Structural opening, then a kitchen across the new space | Runs with the build |
| Doors and worktop only | Fronts, handles and worktop replaced, carcasses kept | 2–3 working days |
A stone or composite worktop sits across the top of whichever of those applies and adds one to two weeks between stages, because it is templated after the units are fixed and then made off site.
Supply and fit, or fitting only
Both are normal and they are priced differently. Supply and fit means the units, worktop, appliances and labour come from us on one quote, and one firm carries the whole job. Fitting only means you buy the kitchen and we install it. A lot of our work arrives that way, usually from Wren, B&Q, Magnet or a local showroom, and we hold trade accounts so a trade-only range such as Howdens is open to you through us as well.
The choice is less about which brand of box is better than the sales process suggests. The questions worth asking are who is accountable when the goods and the labour come from two different firms, and whether the plumbing, the electrical work and the gas connection sit inside the fitting price or are three separate bookings you are expected to make yourself. A fitting quote that looks noticeably cheaper than the others has usually answered that second question differently.
When the sink, the cooker or the sockets move
Moving services is the biggest single lever on a fitting price, and the reason is mechanical rather than commercial. A relocated sink needs its waste run back to the stack with enough fall to clear, which in a solid ground floor can mean lifting screed, and altered drainage is building regulations work rather than a fitting choice. A hob in a new position needs the gas run extended and tested by a Gas Safe registered engineer. An induction hob is a load the original cooker circuit was often not sized for, so the incoming supply and the consumer unit get checked before anyone promises it. A new circuit or a board replacement is notifiable work under Part P, and a registered installer certifies it rather than notifying it job by job — which is what scheme membership such as NICEIC means in practice.
Gas is the part with no do-it-yourself version. The hob is capped off by a Gas Safe registered engineer before the old kitchen comes out, and recommissioned after the new worktop and cut-out are in. Smelling gas at any stage is an emergency rather than a call for us. Shut the supply off at the meter control valve, unless the meter is down in a cellar or basement, get doors and windows open, touch no electrical switch and light nothing, then ring 0800 111 999 free on the National Gas Emergency Service. That sequence is the HSE's, not ours.
Keeping the sink, cooker and appliances where they already are is the largest saving available on any kitchen, and it is worth pricing both versions before you decide. Our own plumbers and electricians do the first fix, so that comparison is a line in the quote rather than a variation discovered halfway through.
Extraction, and the number nobody quotes you
Getting a hood to vent outside is the hardest detail in a lot of Teesside kitchens, and it is the one most often quietly dropped. The reason it matters is a figure rather than an opinion. Approved Document F, Volume 1 sets the minimum intermittent extract rate for a kitchen at 30 litres per second where a cooker hood extracts to the outside, and at 60 litres per second where there is no hood, or the hood does not extract outside. Those are the two ends of the recirculating-hood argument, stated by the regulation rather than by us: choosing the easy option doubles the rate the room has to achieve some other way.
The same table puts a utility room at 30 litres per second and a bathroom at 15. Two details in the document travel with the hood as well: where the manufacturer gives no figure, it sits between 650mm and 750mm above the hob, and in a room with no openable window the fan has to keep running for at least 15 minutes after the room is vacated.
None of which decides itself on fitting day. A real route out of a solid wall is a survey question, and where the terminal lands on a visible elevation in a conservation area it is a consent question before it is a technical one.
Worktops, and the wait they create
The worktop decides more of your schedule than the units do.
| Worktop | How it is measured | Effect on the schedule | Where it struggles |
|---|---|---|---|
| Laminate | Cut and jointed on site | None | Water at a cut edge, which swells and does not recover |
| Solid wood | Cut on site, oiled before and after | Small, for oiling | Standing water, and owners who stop oiling it |
| Quartz or composite | Templated after units, made off site | A real gap of days | Heat, and cut-outs that cannot be altered later |
| Granite | Templated after units, made off site | A real gap of days | Needs sealing, and pattern varies slab to slab |
| Solid surface | Templated, fabricated, jointed | A real gap of days | Heat, though scratches can be sanded out |
Nobody enjoys the days with base units and no worktop, but it belongs in the schedule rather than in a phone call. If the kitchen has to be usable by a fixed date, laminate removes that gap entirely.
What Teesside housing does to a kitchen
Victorian terraces, in Linthorpe, around Oxbridge and up the jewel streets in Saltburn. Walls that were never square and have moved since, and a kitchen that was frequently added long after the house, with the water supply somewhere else entirely. These jobs are won by scribing and patience. Kitchen fitting in Middlesbrough covers the terrace stock in more detail.
Inter-war semis, in Acklam, Marton, Fairfield and Hartburn. The question here is nearly always the knock-through into the dining room, and it has to be settled before the kitchen is ordered, because an open-plan room wants a different layout from a closed galley. Where a wall is structural our building team sizes it properly.
Post-war estates, across Billingham, Thornaby, Ormesby and Park End, built to a small number of repeating house types. Small kitchens, often with a pantry or a larder cupboard that can be brought back into the run of units. Kitchen fitting in Stockton covers the same pattern north of the river.
Estates from the 1980s onward, in Ingleby Barwick, Coulby Newham and Hemlington, where the original developer kitchens are failing in waves. Hinges and drawer runners first, then a worktop swollen at the sink. Often the carcasses are still sound, and doors and a new top get you most of the result. That is discussed on the Ingleby Barwick page.
Coastal lets, at Redcar, Seaton Carew and Saltburn. Heavy use in short bursts by people who are not paying for the repairs. Specification should follow that, and our between-tenancy checklist covers how a kitchen fits into a turnaround.
When to ring somebody else
We will not give a firm start date for a kitchen that is not yet on site. A provisional date, yes. A promise built around a delivery nobody has seen is how a family ends up cooking in a hallway at Christmas.
We will not fit a stone worktop and finish a kitchen inside a few days, because templating and fabrication make that impossible. If all you need is one door hung or one appliance swapped, a self-employed joiner will get to you sooner and charge you less. And if we think the plan will not work in the room, you will hear it at the survey rather than after the units are in. Not everyone wants to hear it.
Getting a fitting price
Send us the plan, or let us come and measure the room as it stands. You get a fixed written price for a scope that lists what is in and what is out, a schedule with the worktop gap marked on it, and the option to accept online without a doorstep conversation. Quoted work carries no call-out fee, and whatever turns up behind the old units is priced in writing and agreed with you before the work happens, instead of appearing as a line on the final invoice. Start on our contact page.
