Salt Air and Flat Pack: IKEA Kitchen Fitting in Barry

The first thing we look at on a Barry job is ventilation and sealing rather than doors. An extractor that genuinely ducts outside, worktop cut outs sealed properly at the sink and hob, and a well fitted upstand do more for the life of a coastal kitchen than a more expensive door front ever will. IKEA laminate and solid wood worktops are both fine here as long as every cut edge is sealed, which is exactly where self fitted kitchens fail, because the swelling starts on the hidden underside of a cut around the sink and there is no repairing it afterwards.

Then there is the wall. METOD is a suspension rail system, so the entire kitchen hangs off one rail that must be fixed dead level into something solid, and the plugs in the box are aimed at modern blockwork and plasterboard. The dock era terraces are solid walled and want resin anchors or long frame fixings, while the Colcot and Gibbonsdown estate houses are generally more predictable, with the boiler or a corner back door being the real design problem rather than the fixings. In both, base units are levelled individually on their legs so the worktop runs dead flat and the plinth is scribed down to follow a floor that moves.

The waterfront apartments at The Quays are the opposite case, square modern walls and easy fixings but a communal entrance, a lift and delivery windows set by the building management. We confirm those arrangements at the survey and protect the lift and corridors on the way in and the old kitchen on the way out. Wherever you are in CF62 or CF63 we check the IKEA order against the room first, because planner designs regularly miss fillers, cover panels and legs, and every carcass still has to be built on site. We are fit only, we coordinate a Gas Safe registered engineer and a qualified electrician, we work Monday to Friday, eight until six, with Saturdays by appointment, and the written quote after a home survey is fixed.

What is included

• METOD system specialists
• Flat-pack assembly experts
• Custom modifications
• Worktop cutting and fitting

Fitting IKEA kitchens

METOD is a suspension rail system, so the whole kitchen hangs off a rail that has to be fixed dead level into something solid. In the stone walled terraces common across the Cynon and Taff valleys that means proper fixings rather than the plasterboard plugs supplied in the box. There is also a genuine assembly stage with IKEA, since every carcass arrives flat and has to be built before it can be hung.