Built On Site: IKEA Kitchens Fitted Around Bridgend

On the modern estates the rooms are square and the floors are level, which makes the fit itself clean and quick. The catch is the walls. Plasterboard on dot and dab is standing off the blockwork on adhesive dabs, and timber stud is just board and air between the timbers, so a fixing into the board alone will not carry a loaded wall cabinet, let alone a full run hanging off one rail. We check what is genuinely behind the plaster at the survey, then fix through to the blockwork or into the studs, adding noggins where the timbers fall in the wrong place for the rail height you want.

The older stone properties around Newcastle Hill, Laleston and Coychurch reverse that. Solid walls with no cavity hold a fixing very well once you are into sound stone, but the plugs in the IKEA box are aimed at modern construction and are not what goes into these walls. There is also no cavity to hide services in, so pipes and cables are chased or neatly boxed, and coring for an extractor duct takes proper kit and time. Add out of square walls and settled floors and you are into scribing end panels, cutting carcasses down and closing out with fillers, which is normal work but has to be allowed for in the programme.

Whichever you have, the assembly stage is the same. Every carcass arrives flat and is built on site, which is real work rather than an afternoon, and most Bridgend properties have a garage or a spare room that makes a sensible build area. We check the order against the room before delivery, because IKEA planner designs regularly miss fillers, cover panels and legs. Wildmill and the older council built estates usually have a concrete ground floor with boxed pipework, which is worth rerouting properly while the room is stripped, and Porthcawl adds coastal humidity where a genuinely ducted extractor and sealed worktop cuts earn their keep. We are fit only, we coordinate a Gas Safe registered engineer and a qualified electrician, and the price is fixed in writing after a home survey.

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.