Kitchen and Bathroom Fitters in East Grinstead (RH19)
Fitting a kitchen in an old East Grinstead building is a scribing job, not an assembly job. On a timber frame that has moved for centuries nothing is level, nothing is plumb, and units fitted as though they were show it straight away.
Fitting to a building that has moved
In the old buildings near the centre, floors fall, walls lean and no two corners are the same.
A kitchen fitted to those surfaces as though they were flat gives you tapering gaps at the end of every run, doors that will not line up and a worktop with a visible fall along it. The work is in the preparation and the setting out: floors levelled or packed, each unit scribed to the wall it actually meets rather than the wall it is supposed to meet, and the run set out from whichever line the eye will follow. It is slower than a straightforward fit and it is the whole difference in how the finished room reads.
The more conventional houses
Out in the Victorian streets and the later family housing it is more ordinary work — though Victorian rear additions here have the same narrow-kitchen problem as terraces anywhere, and the same choice between a careful refit and opening the space up. Bathrooms across the older stock share one recurring issue: floors that have taken a great deal of settlement and need sorting before anything is tiled, because tiling onto a floor that still moves is how you get cracked grout inside a year.
The trades in the right order
A kitchen or bathroom is several trades in sequence, and sequencing is where most jobs come unstuck.
Our own team does the building work and we bring in and manage the specialists, so each trade arrives when the job is actually ready for it.
More in East Grinstead
Everything we do in East Grinstead is on the East Grinstead area sheet, and the full detail of how we approach this trade is on the bathrooms & kitchens page.
Common questions
Q.01Can a modern kitchen be fitted in an old timber-framed house?
Yes, and it is mostly about scribing and setting out rather than the units themselves. Fitted properly it looks made for the room; fitted as though the walls were straight, it does not.
Q.02Why does it take longer than a standard fit?
Because every unit meets a wall or floor that is not true and has to be scribed to it individually, and the floors usually need work first. That time is what you are paying for and it is what the result depends on.
Q.03Do you do bathrooms as well?
Yes. In the older houses here the floor is the first thing to deal with — tiling onto a floor that has settled and still moves leads to cracked grout and worse.
Q.04Do you supply the kitchen?
Either way. Some customers buy their own units and have us do everything else, others want supply and fit as one job. We will price it whichever way suits and say what is included.
Q.05Can a wet room work in an old timber-framed house?
It can, but the floor decides it. A wet room needs a proper fall and full tanking, and in a building whose frame has moved for centuries that means the floor structure is dealt with first. Done on top of an uneven old floor it will leak eventually.
Thinking about bathrooms & kitchens in East Grinstead?
Tell us what you are planning. We come out, look at the job properly and give you a price for it.