Ordering a new kitchen is the easy part. Wren, IKEA, Howdens, Magnet — pick your units, pick your worktop, pay the deposit, and a delivery date lands in your diary a few weeks later. What happens after the van pulls away is where the actual project sits, and it is also where things most often go wrong. London properties rarely have straight walls, level floors or generous access, and a kitchen that looks flawless in a showroom can expose every one of those quirks within the first day of fitting. Here are the mistakes that come up again and again, and what to do instead.
Assuming the supplier fits the kitchen too
Most major suppliers sell you the units and stop there. Delivery is their job; getting cabinets onto your walls, plumbed in and finished is yours to sort out, usually with a separate installer, plumber, electrician and sometimes a Gas Safe engineer for a gas hob. Homeowners who do not realise this until the units are already sitting in boxes in the hallway end up scrambling for tradespeople at short notice, often paying more and waiting longer than if they had lined everything up before ordering. Book your installer around the confirmed delivery date, not after it.
Tiling before the units go in
It seems logical to get the messy trades finished first, but tiling before the cabinets are fitted is one of the most common sequencing errors on a kitchen job. Once the units are in place, splashback height, worktop upstands and appliance gaps all become fixed points. Tile first, and the risk is gaps, awkward cuts, or tiling that simply does not line up with the finished layout. The correct order is units first, then worktop, then tiling around what is actually there.
Ignoring the plumbing and electrics until it is too late
If pipework or wiring is not in the right place before the units arrive, you are either moving a drain after the kitchen is half-built or living with an appliance in the wrong spot. A proper pre-installation survey — checking wall and floor levels, existing plumbing, gas points and electrics against the kitchen plan — catches this before it becomes a delay mid-fit rather than a note on-site.
Underestimating handleless and gloss finishes
A handleless kitchen relies on a consistent finger-pull channel across every door, and gloss finishes show the smallest misalignment under ordinary kitchen lighting. Both need more careful hinge adjustment and considerably more time than a standard handled kitchen, and this is exactly the kind of detail a rushed installation skips. If your kitchen uses either finish, ask upfront how much extra time has been allowed for alignment — the answer says a lot about whether the job will actually be done properly.
Hiring a general handyman instead of a specialist
This is the mistake Wren Kitchen installers get called in to fix most often. A kitchen fit is not flat-pack furniture assembly scaled up: sequencing, structural fixing into plasterboard or older masonry, and coordinating several trades all matter, and a generalist booked through a listings site frequently has not fitted the specific brand or range you have bought. It is not that a handyman is incapable — it is that kitchen fitting rewards experience with the particular system in front of them.
Not checking the delivery before installation starts
Flat-pack kitchens store perfectly well in dry conditions, even for a while, but every box should be opened and checked against the order before fitting begins, not discovered mid-installation. Missing or damaged parts are a straightforward fix when flagged on delivery day, and a genuine headache when found halfway through the fit, since reordering from the supplier can stall the whole job.
Skipping the snagging walkthrough
The final five per cent of a kitchen fit — adjusted doors, tested appliances, consistent gaps, neat silicone and trims — is what separates a kitchen that looks properly fitted from one that merely looks installed. Skipping a proper snagging walkthrough before the installer packs up turns any of these small issues into your problem to chase up later, rather than something corrected on the spot while the tools are still in the van.
Forgetting that stone worktops run on their own timeline
Laminate worktops can usually be cut and fitted on the same visit as the rest of the kitchen, but stone, quartz and solid surface cannot. They need a separate templating visit once the units are in and level, followed by a fabrication lead time that can run to a couple of weeks before the finished worktop is ready to drop in. Homeowners who assume the whole kitchen finishes in one continuous week are often surprised to find the worktop is the one element still waiting on a supplier’s schedule. Factor this into the plan from the start and it is a minor scheduling detail rather than a last-minute delay.
Not budgeting time for London-specific access issues
A kitchen fit in a Victorian terrace or a flat with a controlled parking zone rarely runs on the same timeline as one in a modern house with a driveway. Loading restrictions, permit requirements and tight stairwells all add time that a generic quote will not account for. Ask early whether the installer has actually worked in your postcode before, rather than finding out on day one that access is going to eat into the schedule.
Getting it right
None of this is complicated once you know what to look for, but it is easy to miss when you are ordering your first kitchen and simply want the process over with. The pattern behind almost every mistake on this list is the same: treating installation as an afterthought to the purchase, rather than a project in its own right that deserves the same attention as choosing the units. Get the sequencing, the trades and the finishing right, and a kitchen renovation is genuinely straightforward. Get it wrong, and even the best units in the showroom will not save the result.
Urban Kitchens have been fitting kitchens across London since 2012, covering everything from independent Wren and IKEA installations to full turnkey renovations, with every job backed by a 12-month workmanship guarantee.Copy textCopy HTMLRejectDone
