Your kitchen contract

Having a kitchen fitted in your home is a major home improvement contract. There are a number of important points that you should bear in mind:

• Where the kitchen is delivered to you before fitting starts, you will need to make arrangements to store the items; your garage if available is the most common choice. You will need to empty all of your cupboards and store the contents temporarily elsewhere. You may need to make some arrangement for your pet cat or dog! Tell your neighbours what is happening and inform them that there will be workmen coming and going for a week or so.
• Your supplier will tell you how long fitting is expected to take. During the fitting stage, expect some disruption to your home. In particular, the supplier will need to disconnect some services (e.g. gas, electric, water) in order to fit appliances. Whilst your supplier should take steps to keep any disruption to a minimum, remember that you will need to make some arrangements for cooking, laundry etc. during this period.
• Even the best supplier is likely to come across some ‘snags’ during fitting. This is inevitable with such a significant amount of work that a kitchen fit involves. Your supplier should identify these areas with you and either address them during fitting or let you know what arrangements they will make to resolve them once the major fit has been completed. Your supplier may need to make a ‘snagging list’ detailing the areas that need completion, and arrange a final visit to complete them. You should expect most remedial work to be carried out and completed within two to four weeks from the completion date.
• Most suppliers will ask you to sign a completion certificate at the end of the kitchen fit, to confirm that the kitchen has been completed and that there are no outstanding issues. If there are areas that you are unhappy about, note them on the completion certificate so that it is clear what is left to be done.