Kitchen and Bathroom Fitters in Kenley (CR8)
The large Edwardian and interwar houses in Kenley have generous rooms that were designed to be separate. Most kitchen work here is about joining two of them without losing what makes the house worth living in.
Joining rooms that were built to be separate
In a house of this size the kitchen and the dining room are both decent rooms in their own right, and knocking them together gains a lot — but it can also strip out the character people bought the house for. Cornice, picture rails and skirting that run round two rooms have to be dealt with deliberately at the new opening rather than stopped wherever the beam happens to land. Done properly the new opening reads as though it was always there; done carelessly it reads as a hole in a wall with a bit of plasterboard round it. The structural side is routine on these houses — the load calculated, a beam sized for it — and it is the joinery detail afterwards that decides how the room looks.
Services in a house of that age
Properties of this size that have not been touched in decades usually need more than the kitchen doing. Wiring added to over the years, pipework that has been rerouted more than once, and a hot water system that will not keep up with a bigger kitchen and a second bathroom. Once things are open we tell you what we have found before units are ordered, because it is far cheaper to sort out then than to go back into finished walls a year later.
Trades in the right order, one firm answerable
Our own team does the building work and we bring in and manage the specialists, so each trade arrives when the job is ready rather than when it suits somebody else's diary.
More in Kenley
Everything we do in Kenley is on the Kenley area sheet, and the full detail of how we approach this trade is on the bathrooms & kitchens page.
Common questions
Q.01Can I keep the original cornice and mouldings?
Largely, yes, and it is worth doing. They need dealing with properly at the new opening rather than simply stopping where the beam lands, which is what makes a knock-through look deliberate.
Q.02Will the wiring need doing at the same time?
Often in houses of this age. We open up, look properly and tell you what we find before units are ordered, so you can decide with the facts.
Q.03Do you do bathrooms as well?
Yes. In larger houses the question is usually whether the hot water system will keep up once there is a second or third bathroom, which is worth answering before you start.
Q.04How long does a knock-through and new kitchen take?
The structural stage is days; the whole job depends on what the services need. You get a programme with the written price.
Q.05Will the hot water cope with a second bathroom or en suite?
That is the usual question in a large Kenley house, and it is worth answering before the tiling is chosen. An older system that was fine for one bathroom often will not keep up with two. We look at it at survey rather than discovering it at the end.
Thinking about bathrooms & kitchens in Kenley?
Tell us what you are planning. We come out, look at the job properly and give you a price for it.