Kitchen fitting in Berlin

A kitchen is a lot of straight, rigid, factory-made furniture going into a room where nothing is straight. Almost everything that separates a good fit from a bad one comes down to how you handle that.

What’s included

Taking the old kitchen out and getting rid of it, prepping and levelling the walls and floor, first-fix electrics for appliances and lighting, assembling and installing the carcasses, hanging and aligning doors, fitting worktops, splashback tiling, connecting the appliances, handles and plinths, and scribing everything to the room.

That includes the water side. Sink, taps, waste and the dishwasher get plumbed in, as long as the supply and drainage are already where the units are going. If you’re moving the sink to a different wall, new pipework and drainage has to be run first and that’s a plumber’s job — I’ll get one in and carry on around them.

I fit flat-pack and modular kitchens — IKEA, Nobilia, the rest — and bespoke runs. Same job either way. The difference is that a cheaper carcass is less forgiving of an unlevel floor, so it needs more prep, not less.

How the job actually runs

1. Measure the real room. Not the plan. Walls checked for plumb, floor for level, corners for square, all before anything gets ordered.
2. Prepare. Strip out, make good, level where it’s needed. If the floor drops 20mm across a run of units, that gets dealt with now, not by packing out the last cabinet.
3. First fix. Electrics for oven, hob, extractor, sockets and under-cabinet lighting while the walls are still open.
4. Carcasses. Assembled and set out from a level datum line, not off the floor.
5. Worktops. Templated, cut and sealed. The cut-outs for sink and hob are the point of no return, so they happen once everything under them is right.
6. Second fix. Doors and drawers hung and aligned, appliances wired in, sink and dishwasher connected, plinths and trims scribed to the floor and walls.
7. Splashback and finish. Tiling, sealing, and clearing up.

Berlin kitchens, and what to expect

Berlin walls aren’t straight, and Altbau walls are obviously not straight. A run of units against a wall that bows 15mm shows it up as a tapering gap behind the worktop, unless the run gets packed and scribed to suit. Done properly, nobody ever notices. Done badly, it’s the first thing you look at every morning.

Floors are the other one. Timber floors on joists with a fill between them are everywhere here, and they’re rarely level. Units sitting on an unlevel floor put the worktop out too, and that’s how you end up with doors that won’t line up along a run.

Then the electrics. Plenty of older Berlin kitchens run on circuits that were never meant to carry an electric oven, an induction hob and a dishwasher at the same time. A hob usually wants its own supply. That’s a real cost, and much cheaper to find at survey than on install day.

Last thing: gas. Some Berlin flats still have a gas connection in the kitchen. Anything involving gas is outside what I do and needs the proper specialist.

How long it takes

Two to four days on site for a standard run in a room that’s ready. A week or more if the room needs levelling first, the electrics need upgrading, or you’ve gone for a solid-surface worktop — those get templated, made off site and brought back, which puts a gap in the middle of the job.

Commonest cause of delay is a missing or damaged part in a flat-pack delivery. Check it against the plan the day it arrives, not the morning I start.

What moves the price

• How level the room is. Prep is invisible, and it’s most of the difference between a two-day fit and a five-day one.
• Electrical work. A new circuit for a hob or oven back to the consumer unit is a proper job in a solid-walled flat.
• Worktop material. Laminate gets cut on site. Stone and solid surface are templated, made off site and returned, which changes cost and timing both.
• Whether the layout moves. Keep the sink where it is and I can plumb it back in myself. Move it and you need new drainage run first, which means a plumber and another visit.
• Appliance choice. Integrated appliances take longer and are less forgiving of an out-of-square opening.
• Access. Getting a kitchen up four flights takes exactly as long as you’d think.

Send me the kitchen plan and a few photos of the room as it stands, and I’ll tell you what the plan hasn’t accounted for.