Old Town Cottage or Talbot Green Semi, DIY Kitchens Fitted in Llantrisant

In the old town the access decides the project. The lanes are narrow, steep and in places no good for anything larger than a van, so the order is dropped at the nearest workable point and carried in by hand, and rigid carcasses are bulkier to carry than flat panels would be. We walk the access at the survey and agree the drop point before the delivery is booked rather than working it out on the morning. The cottages themselves have thick stone walls, low ceilings, small door openings and floors that have settled over two centuries, so almost nothing is standard size and the order needs more filler and panel than a planner will ever suggest.

Down the hill the picture flips. Talbot Green, Beddau and Pontyclun are mostly post war and modern estate housing with regular rooms, level floors and plasterboard walls, which makes a rigid kitchen a predictable and fairly quick fit, with the fixings needing to reach the blockwork or a noggin behind the board. The constraint there is size rather than shape, because a lot of those kitchens are narrow galleys where the boiler, the back door and the window are all competing for one short run. Ordering online without someone measuring that run properly is how people end up with a base unit too many and nowhere to put it.

Storage between delivery and fitting is easier below the hill than above it. An estate house usually has a garage that takes the whole order as long as it is dry, while an old town cottage may have nothing but a room you were using, so we time the drop close to the start of the fit. Chipboard carcasses do not tolerate a damp store, and in a two hundred year old building with solid walls that is a real consideration rather than a theoretical one. Check the delivery against the order early, because replacements go through you as the account holder. You get a fixed written quote after the survey, coordinated Gas Safe and electrical work, a workmanship guarantee and public liability insurance.

What is included

• DIY Kitchens specialists
• Full assembly service
• Worktop templating
• Complete project management

Fitting DIY Kitchens kitchens

DIY Kitchens is an online supplier, so there is no showroom visit and no designer standing in your kitchen. That puts more weight on getting the measurements and the order right up front, which is where a survey before ordering pays for itself. Units arrive rigid and pre-built, so once they are on site the fit moves quickly.