KITCHEN: installation

This was a point in the project that I had looked forward to for a long time. We had decided that we would pay John Lewis to fit the kitchen so all I had to do was hand over the house keys and leave them to get on with it. For the amount you are paying for a contemporary kitchen on this scale, the installation cost is relatively small. There will almost certainly be major elements that will have to installed by specialists anyway. We had a templated Quartz worktop and glass splashbacks within our design and most smart kitchens today will have some variant of these materials.

January 2012: The empty room ready for John Lewis. The stainless steel radiator is there to hlep when the stove isn't lit. This is the new internal door through to the utility room.

The other obvious point to having a kitchen installed by the supplier is that it is clear who is at fault when there is a problem. A kitchen is an extremely complex system and it is inevitable that there will be issues at some point in the project. We had a whole string of glitches with our installation but John Lewis patiently fixed and sorted all of them. The only unresolved problems were shortcomings with the basic design of the Alno elements. The Alno stuff is great but there were a few unresolved issues that seemed out of place in their price range.

January 2012: The waste and hot and cold water for the new Franke sink.

January 2012: The Alno kitchen arrives from John Lewis.

January 2012: Alno cupboards arrive fully assembled so the kitchen came together fairly quickly.