KITCHEN FITTERS IN CAERPHILLY

Fitting kitchens in Caerphilly's older stock

Most of the kitchens we replace around Caerphilly, Bedwas, Abertridwr and the Aber valley sit in stone or solid-brick terraces built long before anyone planned for a dishwasher. The units are the easy part. What decides the price, and the programme, is what is behind the old ones.

• Solid walls, no cavity. Services cannot be dropped into a void — they are either chased into masonry and made good, or boxed and panelled. Chasing solid stone is slower and messier than plasterboard, and it is worth deciding which you want before the strip-out rather than during it.
• The rear outshot. A lot of valley terraces have a single-storey back addition holding the kitchen. They are frequently cold, often uninsulated, and sometimes have a roof at the end of its life. Fitting an expensive kitchen into one without dealing with that first is money badly spent.
• Chimney breasts. Removing one to square off a kitchen is common here and is structural work — the stack above still needs support, and it needs Building Control sign-off.
• Levels. Old floors in these houses are rarely flat. Base units get packed and scribed, and a worktop run that looks fine on plan can need real work to sit true.

Moving the sink, the boiler, or both

The single biggest cost driver in an older Caerphilly kitchen is whether the layout stays where the services already are. Keeping the sink on its existing wall is straightforward. Moving it across the room means new waste runs with enough fall to work, which in a solid ground floor can mean lifting and re-laying part of it. The same applies to a boiler — relocating one is a Gas Safe job with a new flue route, and it is the kind of thing worth pricing before you fall in love with a layout.

We survey before quoting rather than after, precisely so these things surface while the layout can still change. A drawing that ignores where the drainage runs is not a quote, it is an estimate waiting to be revised.

Getting materials in

Access is a genuine planning item in the valleys in a way it is not on a Cardiff suburban street. Terraced rows on a gradient, on-street parking only, and no rear lane means the skip position, the delivery slot and the strip-out route all need thinking about. We agree that with you up front, because a kitchen delivery that cannot get to the door costs a day.

Newer estates

The picture is different on the newer estates around Caerphilly and Ystrad Mynach: cavity walls, level floors, plasterboard, and services roughly where you would expect. Those kitchens are mostly a question of layout and finish rather than of what is hidden behind the plaster, and they run faster and more predictably as a result.

How long it takes

A like-for-like replacement in a modern house is commonly a week to ten days including tiling and making good. An older terrace where the layout changes, the walls are solid and the floor needs attention more typically runs two to three weeks. We give you the sequence up front so you know which days you are without a sink, and we set up a temporary one where the programme is long enough to need it.