From Flat Pack to Finished: IKEA Kitchens in Penarth

Assembly is the part people forget when they compare IKEA to a rigid kitchen. Twenty or thirty carcasses have to be built before anything can be hung, and in a Penarth villa the sensible place to do that is rarely the room the kitchen is going in. We agree a build area at the survey, usually a cleared reception room near the access route, so we are not carrying finished carcasses down a Victorian staircase they will not turn on. Boxes get opened, checked and built in the order the run goes together, which keeps the room usable for longer.

Once the carcasses exist, METOD depends entirely on the rail. It is a suspension system, so the whole kitchen hangs off one horizontal rail that must be fixed dead level into something solid, and the plugs in the box assume modern blockwork or plasterboard. Penarth villas give you thick solid walls, lath and plaster on some internal partitions and deep skirtings that have to be cut back behind the base units. We find out what is behind the plaster before drilling and use resin or heavy duty mechanical fixings to suit, then set the rail off a proper datum rather than off a floor that has moved for 130 years. High ceilings actually help, because the rail height can be lifted to suit taller storage instead of leaving a dead metre above the wall units.

The Marina and dockside apartments swap all of that for access. Square modern walls make the fixings straightforward, but every box and every worktop has to go through a communal entrance and a lift, so lift dimensions decide worktop lengths before the plan does. Wherever you are in CF64, we check the IKEA order against the room first, because planner designs regularly miss fillers, cover panels and legs, and cutting carcasses down or scribing around old pipework is routine in the older houses. We are fit only, we coordinate a Gas Safe registered engineer and a qualified electrician, and the written quote after the 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.