Home DIY

Have you designed or fitted kitchens before?

Personally I wouldn't as there is always going to be things that go differently than expected. The fact that you've got no one else to blame adds another layer of stress to what can be a stressful process. Instead of doing the whole thing why not focus on designing say floor to ceiling cabs that complement an otp kitchen that you've specced.

Have you seen our kitchen?

Having lived with my kitchen which someone DIY installed... I would say that cabinets are not the worry or concern.

The concern is whether you've got your electrics right, whether your plumbing is done right, whether your boiler is accessible and serviceable (including filters, taps, plumbing around them), whether it all makes sense as a total thing, i.e. I have sockets beneath a sink, and individually I'm sure this is fine to reason about but when the sink waste trap failed and leaked it shorted all of the electrics, and as those weren't isolated properly it took out a couple of things with it.

The cabinets seem to be the smallest problem, and I feel up to buying and fitting either ready-mades or carcasses... the thing I wish whomever had done my kitchen had done, is simply to engage decent trades to strip the kitchen down, put in a decent and clean plumbing and electrics, and then make good the empty kitchen before cabinets had gone in.

So yes... you can do it, but don't scrimp on the trades to get a solid foundation from which you work from. Designing the layout and cutting a cabinet shell to accommodate the layout of the plumbing and electrics is far better than trying to fit the plumbing and electrics to your cabinet layout.