Guide · Kitchen

How to plan a kitchen project before buying

In a kitchen, the order of the decisions matters as much as the choices themselves. Several of its lines cannot be chosen until others are settled, and one of them — the worktop — is measured only after the units are already in. Getting that sequence wrong is harder to undo than changing your mind about the handles.

No account needed — this is decision order and lead times, not installation guidance

Updated

Kitchen

A template in the iPhone app. It opens a 9-item checklist under the editable project name Kitchen project.

How to open it

Measure, then settle the layout

A kitchen is dimensioned from its units, and the units are dimensioned from the room. Until both are settled, every other line on the list is a guess wearing a product code.

  • The room: wall lengths, ceiling height, window and door positions, and anything that cannot move.
  • Appliance sizes, and whether each one is built in or freestanding — the aperture in the run depends on the answer.
  • Where the existing services are, and whether the new layout keeps them.
  • The route in, for units, appliances and worktop alike.
  • Where the bin, the recycling and the things you use every day are actually going to live.
  • What you are keeping. A kitchen project does not have to mean all of it.

A supplier’s own survey is worth having even when you have measured carefully, because the person who measures is the one who then has to make it fit.

The order the decisions depend on

Each of these depends on the one before it, which is why a kitchen is hard to buy as a single basket.

  • First, layout and units

    Everything else is measured from the units. Until the run is decided, nothing below it can be chosen with any confidence.

  • Then appliances

    Oven, hob and extractor decide apertures, services and sometimes the height of a run. Choose them before the units are ordered, not after they arrive.

  • Then the worktop

    Templated after the units are fitted, with a gap between measuring and installation. That gap is part of the schedule, not a delay in it.

  • Last, the finishing

    Splashback, handles and flooring, against finished surfaces. Handles are the easiest line on the list to change your mind about, so there is no reason to decide them early.

The sink and tap belong with the units rather than with the finishing, because both the unit they sit in and the worktop cut-out depend on which ones you choose.

Confirm with whoever is fitting it

A kitchen involves other trades and other people’s diaries, and those dependencies decide when each product is actually needed. They are worth settling before anything is ordered.

Who supplies what
A fitter may supply some parts and expect you to supply others. Agreeing that line by line before ordering avoids both the duplicate and the gap.
What each appliance needs
Connection is somebody’s job and somebody’s decision. Confirm what an appliance requires with the person doing that work before you buy it, rather than reading it off a product page.
The order of the trades
Whether flooring goes in before or after the units, and when the worktop template happens, are two questions the fitter is better placed to answer than you are.
The start date
Fix it first. It turns every other line into a deadline, which is a more manageable problem than an open-ended list.

What the app can hold. Each item takes a price, a priority, a deadline, a product link and Notes, and can be marked as purchased once it has been. That covers “ordered, templated on the 14th, fitter supplying the trims”. It does not chase a supplier, and it does not know what an appliance needs.

Lead times and the weeks without a kitchen

  • Order the slow things first

    Units, worktops and some appliances carry the long lead times. They also arrive as a great many boxes, so the second question after “when” is “where is it all going to go”.

  • Count the template gap

    If the worktop is measured after fitting, there is a defined stretch with units and no surface. Knowing its length in advance is the difference between an inconvenience and a crisis.

  • Plan the temporary kitchen

    A kettle, a microwave and a plan for washing up. It is the easiest line to leave out of the plan, and it is what the weeks without a kitchen actually depend on.

  • Check everything on delivery

    A damaged door reported on arrival can still be dealt with inside the lead time. Found on fitting day, it holds up the whole run.

Open it as a plan

Everything above works on paper. If you would rather keep it on your phone — with each line carrying its own price, priority, notes, deadline and a link to the thing you found — the iPhone app ships a Kitchen template that starts you with a 9-item checklist instead of an empty project.

  1. Add a project

    In the app, tap the + control in the centre of the tab bar. Its accessibility label is “Add a project”.

  2. Start from a template

    The “New project” sheet opens. Use the “Start from a template” row rather than typing a name into an empty project.

  3. Pick Kitchen

    Choose the “Kitchen” chip. The sheet says how many starter items it will add and pre-fills the project name, which you can edit here.

  4. Create project

    Tap “Create project”. The project opens with its checklist already written, and every line is yours to rename, delete or re-prioritise.

Kitchen is the chip in the template picker. The project name arrives pre-filled as Kitchen project, and that part is yours to change before or after you create the project.

What the Kitchen template starts you with

These are suggestions, and a real kitchen will have more lines than these. The ones the template marks Urgent are the ones that dimension everything else, which is why they come first.

  • Units & cabinetsUrgent
  • WorktopUrgent
  • Sink & tap
  • Oven
  • Hob
  • Extractor
  • Splashback / tiles
  • Handles
  • Flooring

What you can change. Every line is a suggestion: rename it, delete it, or add something the template never mentioned. Priority is one of Urgent, Normal or Can Wait, so nothing has to be deleted to be put off.

Coming soon on theApp Store

Plannli is an iPhone app. Nothing on this page needs it.