Kitchen Fitting: Professional Help or DIY?

Doing your own kitchen fitting ought to be possible for anyone who is a reasonably practised DIY-er, but whether or not they should do it is another matter.

If they have the money, then it might be worth paying somebody else to do the kitchen fitting, if it means they’ll get more time for themselves.

The majority of the work involved in fitting a kitchen isn’t that hard, it tends to be the knock on jobs that take the time and effort, like moving plumbing service points around, running new electrical points and making the cabinets fit into awkward corners.

You might start the job thinking it’s straightforward but the old kitchen cabinets may hide a catalogue of horrors.

Either End of the DIY Scale, the Decision is Easy

For many people, employing fitters to do the kitchen fitting will be out of the question, as they simply won’t have the money. It then becomes a case of DIY or not at all. Some people will have the money but will do it themselves because they want the satisfaction, or they don’t think a professional fitter will care as much as they do and no-one else will do such a good job.

For others there’ll be no question of doing the kitchen fitting themselves as they’ll not have the time, so they have to employ someone else. Some people don’t have the right levels of DIY skill and know that if they do it, it will take ages, and there’ll be lots of problems because of their inexperience.

Deciding When it’s a Close Call

It’s up to you to decide where you fit in with those categories but it’s likely that you’re reading this because you fall somewhere in the middle of all of them. It can be tricky if you have enough money to employ a fitter but you aren’t exactly rich. This may mean that you’re not sure whether to do it yourself and save the money for something else, or employ a fitter so that the job is over and done with quickly and without fuss.

One way of deciding this is to compare the hourly rate that you are paid for your own job with the hourly rate that you’d have to pay kitchen fitters. If your rate is higher, then you could consider it worth while to do some extra hours, if that’s an option, then use that money to pay the kitchen fitters. Even if you can’t do overtime to make the extra, you might still consider that it’s worth getting fitters in so that you can use your leisure time for something more pleasurable. Bear in mind also that it will probably take you longer to do the job than fitters who do it all day, every day.

Put a Value on Your Time

If your calculations show that you earn less than the kitchen fitters, then it’s time to consider DIY. What could change your mind about this is that you might value time with your family very highly, in which case it will be worthwhile having a professional job done so that you can have more quality time.