Your IKEA Order, Assembled and Fitted in Merthyr Tydfil

We drill into sound stone rather than the joint, on hammer only where the stone will take it so the face is not blown out, and use resin anchors or long frame fixings sized for what we find. The rail then goes up dead level off a datum, not off the ceiling line, because in a house of that age the ceiling is not level and neither is the floor. Get that right and the rest of METOD does what it is supposed to do, which is go together quickly and stay adjustable. Get it wrong and a run of loaded wall cabinets tells you within a year.

The second Merthyr specific issue is space to build. Every carcass arrives flat, and a full kitchen is more boxes than most people picture, so in a terrace with a narrow rear outshot there is nowhere in the working room to assemble them. We agree a build area at the survey and work through the packs in the order the run goes together, keeping the packaging cleared as we go rather than filling your yard. Deliveries on the tighter Penydarren and Dowlais streets often stop at the top or bottom of the road rather than your door, so we plan the carry in advance and factor it into day one.

Almost every job here involves modifying something. Rear outshots are narrow enough that standard 600mm base units plus a 600mm worktop leave no room to pass, so reduced depth cabinets, a shallower run on one side or a different sink position is often the honest answer. Cutting carcasses down, scribing panels around pipework and a bricked up breast, and closing out with fillers is routine. The Gurnos and the other estates are squarer and simpler, mostly blockwork with some stud, and the newer developments around Trefechan and the town centre are dot and dab plasterboard where the fixing has to reach the block behind. We check the IKEA order against the room before delivery, coordinate the Gas Safe engineer and the electrician, and price it 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.