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DIY fitting a kitchen

How to Fit/Install a DIY Kitchen

September 11, 2017 - No Comments - 10 min read

Back in January, after a year-long wait, I finally ordered our new kitchen. Yep, after months and months of hard work – a finish line was in sight! This kitchen is now the second kitchen that we’ve ever installed, so I thought I would do a proper blog post detailing how to fit your own kitchen. Or at least, how we’ve done it!

Fitting your own kitchen sounds really complex, but actually it’s mostly fairly straightforward and I would say, it’s a lot like putting together a piece of furniture from IKEA. It’s a bit of a jigsaw, more than anything, but some of the pieces need tweaking to fit.

I’ve mentioned previously that we decided to buy our kitchen from DIY-Kitchens (read about our showroom visit here) and having closely watched their website for many many months, I noticed they fairly often have 10% discount events. So I waited. Months, actually. But eventually they had one and we bought a kitchen, scheduling it to arrive at the end of March. All we had to do was finish everything else first.

Thankfully, we managed to stay on track with our schedule and kitchen day soon arrived! Cue – mega excitement!!

DIY-Kitchens delivery

With DIY-kitchens, everything comes pre-built and ready to go! Not only does this considerably cut down on the time you’d need to build them yourselves, but it also means less packaging too. Although don’t worry – everything still arrived well packaged with bubble wrap and foam to protect corners and thick card around the units.

How to Fit a Kitchen

Arrange The Base Units and Attach Feet

As our unit came pre-built, it meant we could literally just slot everything into place in a matter of minutes. No messing about with flat-pack instructions and no unnecessary arguments. The only ‘DIY’ required, was to attach the feet onto the base units.

To do this, all we had to do was turn our base units onto their side, slot the feet into the connector (already attached to the unit), and then twist until it locked in place. Pretty easy huh?

Once all the feet were on the base units, we then placed them in position. You’ll also want to place any freestanding appliances in their correct locations as well!

How to Level Kitchen Base Units

Once the base units are in place, you’ll then need to level them, so they are perfectly spirit level straight and all aligned to the same height.

To do this, you simply twist the bottom of the foot on the unit, which will lower and raise the unit. You’ll need to do this for each foot on each unit until your spirit level is showing on every side and on the top too. It will take a lot of back and forth to get bang-on perfect and can be quite fiddly, especially if your floor isn’t perfectly level.

how to level kitchen base units
levelling kitchen units

We recommend having a second person to help with this, so one person can be on the floor raising/lowering the feet, and the other person can be stood up checking it with a spirit level. If you attempt to do this as a one-man band, it’ll involve a lot of up and down. Your back and knees won’t thank you in the end!

As our kitchen is a galley kitchen, we also needed to make sure the units were level with one another either side of the room. Luckily our spirit level just reached across so we could check this!

how to level units in a galley kitchen

Don’t worry if some of your doors aren’t hanging perfectly level against one another at this stage – you can adjust that later with the hinges which I’ll show towards the end.

How to Secure Kitchen Base Units Together

Now your base units are all in place and perfectly level, we need to secure them together. With DIY-Kitchens, they actually provide you with the correct screws you need in order to do this. Which look a little like this:

kitchen fittings for securing base units

These basically clamp the units together so they’re all connected in one long line and you know they’re not going anywhere. To do this, we recommend clamping your units together to hold in place and then drill a hole through the side of the bae unit, into the one next to it. Place one half of the screw through the hole, and the other on the other side. Once you’ve tightened them, the units will be secured together! We used 2 connectors on each side, so essentially 4 per unit.

How to Attach Base Units to the Wall

Some people also connect the units to the walls, but if your cabinets are butted against the wall, we personally don’t think particularly necessary – we didn’t do it in our old house and those units certainly weren’t going to be moving anywhere! If you have any gaps behind the units (maybe from non-straight walls) I’d recommending using a cabinet locking wedge screw to fit into the gap though – these are great.

How to Fit End Panels in a Kitchen

For this job we picked up a new toy – a plunge saw. It’s basically like a circular saw but works on a track so that you know you’re getting a straight cut every time. It’s also a little more accurate as well.

If you don’t know what end panels are – they are the boards which go on the very end of your kitchen to hide the side of the unit. They come in 60cm widths which are a little wider than the units – and allows you to scribe the panels to the walls and hide any gaps if your walls (like ours!) aren’t perfectly straight/square. Old house problems.

Cutting the end panels was probably the trickiest part about fitting our kitchen – not necessarily because of the cuts, but just making sure we’d gotten measurements right. We hadn’t ordered any spares, so we had one shot to get it right. Explaining how to measure/scribe an end panel is fairly hard, so I recommend checking YouTube videos (like these) on how to scribe, if you’ve never done it before.

To cut using a plunge saw, you simply align your track against your pencil line and then cut. You can also use a circular saw, but you’ll need to clamp a piece of wood/metal ruler to act as a guide. As I mentioned earlier, a plunge saw can only do straight cuts – which makes it great for a job like this! I recommend the investment.

how to cut kitchen end panels

To secure your end panel, clamp the end panel in place and then simply screw through the side of your unit into the end panel, making sure your screws aren’t too long and won’t pop all the way out the other side.

fitting kitchen end panels

How to Fit a Belfast Sink

If you plan on using a normal inset sink, you won’t need to deal with it until the kitchen worktop goes in. If you’re installing a ceramic under-mount sink, then check out this post for how to deal with that.

But for us, we’re fitting a Belfast sink, so I’ll cover that here.

These sinks sit-on-top of their own special unit but you’ll need to cut a hole into the top where this protruding part of the bottom needs to go. In order to not mess this cut up, we made a template from cardboard first, before marking it out onto the unit and the cutting with a jigsaw. You’ll need to drill a first, to slot your jigsaw blade into, then just follow your pencil line round.

You’ll need to make sure that your Belfast sink matches in height against the units either side. If it’s too high, then your worktop won’t sit properly and if it’s too low, there will be a large gap between the top of the sink and bottom of the worktop. Place your sink onto the unit and check!

We also realised our sink was about 13mm too low. You can’t simply raise the unit, otherwise, it won’t match at the bottom with the others. To deal with this, we sourced some 13mm deep timber and used the touch-up paint (supplied with the kitchen) to paint to match the units. We screwed those down and then sat the sink on top of them.

plinth for belfast sink to sit on

ADD SECOND IMAGE WITH ARROW

You can see that we’ve also added an end panel next to the sink, this is because we’re having a freestanding washing machine next to it. You don’t need to do this if you’re just having another unit.

How to Box-In a Fridge Freezer Using a Top Box

Part of our plan for the kitchen was to box in the new fridge-freezer in a similar way to which you would often see with an American style fridge-freezer. For this to work, I ordered a tall end panel and also top box, the same width as the fridge-freezer.

The end panel covers the side of the fridge-freezer and the top box sits over the top of it. We’re also having a worktop dresser unit next to that as well.

IMAGE OF FINISHED LOOK

We attached the tall end panel to the base units with the same locking screws we used before to secure the base units together. The top box is then attached to the tall end panel and also to the wall. We had to use some blocks against the wall to bridge the gap, so we’ve used an off-cut of end panel to secure over and hide those.

how to fit a top box above a fridge
top box secured to the wall
top box above freestanding fridge freezer

How to Fit A Worktop Kitchen Dresser Unit

You’ll need to wait until your worktop is in to be able to fit this! It’s pretty easy actually and simply sits on top of the worktop. You can also use some wall brackets to pin it back too. These slot on the back of the cabinet and then onto the wall. You’ll want to finish off the side with an end panel, cut and secured in the same way as before.

How to Fit Integrated Appliance Doors

All integrated appliance doors are slightly different, so you’ll need to check with the instructions the appliance comes with, but they pretty much always come with the necessary fitting you need and often, a template too, which you can lay over the door and it will tell you exactly where you need to add the screws/fittings.

fitting doors on integrated appliances

How to Fit Kitchen Plinths

Finally, you need to fit the kitchen plinths! These cover the feet of the base units and make the whole kitchen appear built-in. To cut these, we used a mitre saw, but you could also use a jigsaw. Measure your lengths using a distance laser measure and mark up onto the plinth. To protect the paintwork, I recommend using masking tape over the area where you need to cut.

Once cut to size, you can use the fitting clips to secure the plinth to the feet of your units. It’s seriously simple! The only alteration we had to make was around the dishwasher door. As you pulled it open, it would hit the plinth, so we’ve cut out a little channel for the door to slot into when it’s lowered. It seems a fairly common issue and I think looks neat enough!

kitchen plinth with cut out for dishwasher

How to Adjust Kitchen Doors and Drawers to Hang Straight

Remember earlier I mentioned the door and drawers we purchased from DIY-Kitchens have really clever hinges that allow you to alter the position of the door/drawer so they all hang perfectly straight and in line against one another.

On the drawers, this mechanism is hidden behind the ‘Ultima’ tabs on the edge. On the doors, they’re behind the tab on the hinge. You simply slot your screwdriver into those gaps and twisting will move the drawer front up/down and side to side. So brilliant! Once you’ve done this, you’re pretty much DONE!

Time for a beer perhaps?

We made one alteration to the original plan and decided to change an 800mm unit at the end of the run (nearest to the french doors) unit for a 400mm unit. I felt that would give us more room for dog bowls and the bin – otherwise, it felt a little cramped! Unfortunately, you can’t return units at DIY-Kitchens as they’re all made to order, but they were really kind in offering 15% off the new one instead. Huge shout-out to Beth on the team who was all-around amazeballs at helping me in general! We went to collect the new unit to save on delivery and once that unit was finally in place, we were DONE!

Well except for the worktop of course, but that required a bit more saving, so we makeshift our tap onto some wood for now!

how to fit / install a diy kitchen
fitting your own kitchen DIY
fitting a tap in a kitchen

So that’s basically everything really. It was all fairly simple and straightforward to fit. This is the second kitchen we’ve fitted now and other than cutting the worktops and end panels, there really isn’t that many huge DIY skills required. It really is just a case of screwing it all together in a kind of jigsaw fashion. I’d totally recommend anyone giving a DIY kitchen install a go, you can obviously save quite a wad – just take your time, measure carefully and cut once 😉 Definitely recommend investing in a plunge saw for the end panels as well! I’ll do a full reveal of the kitchen with finished worktops soon 😉 And for anyone interested – this is the Linwood Kitchen in the colour Graphite from DIY-Kitchens.

So here’s a rundown of the final costs below. I’d love to know if you’re thinking about or have fitted a DIY kitchen?

Costs:

(rounded to the nearest pound)

New Tools Purchased:
Clamps £8
Plunge Saw £100
New Blade £12
Laser Measure £20
Tiny screwdriver £1

Materials Used:
Screws £4
Sink Waste £5

Kitchen Costs (excluding worktops & appliances)
All Units & Delivery £2521
Sink £107
Tap £55

Total: £2833

Kezzabeth

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Hi - I'm Kezzabeth! Self-taught DIYer, Renovator and Blogger on a mission to turn our house into a home. Seven years ago I was clueless and skill-less, but since then I've learnt how to build, tile, plumb and more. This is my little place on the web where I share everything I've learnt so you can learn too. Read More

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Disclaimer

DIY Content: We’re not builders or experts in the trade industry, so please take any information on this blog as a rough guide and just our own experiences. This blog relates to our home only and you should always consult a professional in you’re in any doubt of work. Please also be aware Building Regulations change often, so always do your own research as well.
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