Planning Your Kitchen

A new kitchen is one of the biggest changes you'll make to a house, and the easiest way to make it harder than it needs to be is to buy first and plan later. Showrooms are good at selling units; they can't always see how a room is really used, where the light falls, or what's hiding behind your walls. A bit of practical planning up front means the kitchen you order is the kitchen that actually fits — not one you spend the fitting week working around.

We're a family-run fitting team in Blackburn, and we're not a design studio — you choose your kitchen, and we fit it. But before you commit, it's worth thinking through how the room needs to work. This page walks through what we'd talk about on a visit, so you can plan with your eyes open.

Start with the people, not the units. Is this a galley you pass through, or the room the whole house ends up in? Do two people cook at once? Is there a table, a homework spot, a back door everyone tramps through?

The old "work triangle" — sink, hob and fridge within easy reach of each other — still holds up, because it's really just about not walking laps while you cook. Around that, it helps to think in zones: prep, cooking, washing-up, storage and somewhere to put the shopping down. Get those roughly right on paper and the rest of the decisions get easier.

There's a difference between a rough measure for choosing a layout and the accurate, on-site measure a kitchen is actually ordered from. For planning, a tape measure and a sketch of the room — walls, window, door, where the pipes and meter are — is plenty to start with.

For ordering, precision matters, and it matters more in the older terraced and stone houses around Blackburn and Darwen than in a newer build. Walls are rarely square, floors are rarely level, and a run measured to the millimetre on a drawing can meet a wall that bows by a centimetre in reality. We work within the existing structure — no knocking things about — and scribe the units to fit the room as it is. That's why we measure on site before anything is ordered or ripped out.

This is your call, and it's the enjoyable part. Doors set the whole tone — shaker, slab, painted, timber, handleless — and you'll find a version of each across the main suppliers. Worktops range from hard-wearing laminate to solid timber, stone and quartz, each with its own look and upkeep. Drawers or cupboards, soft-close throughout, a tall larder, an integrated bin: all worth settling before you order, not after.

We'll give you honest, practical advice on what works and what fits — whether a run is too tight for a particular door to open, say, or where a worktop join will land — but we don't design kitchens and we don't sell them. You choose yours from whichever supplier suits; have a look at the suppliers we fit for how that works, and at what actually drives the cost so the choices don't catch you out later.

A few shapes come up again and again:

• Galley — two runs facing each other. Brilliantly efficient in a narrow room, which is why so many Lancashire terraces have one.
• L-shape — two connected runs. Flexible and sociable, and it leaves room for a table.
• U-shape — three runs. Plenty of storage and worktop if the room can take it.
• Island — a freestanding run in the middle. It wants space on all sides to work, so it suits bigger rooms and open-plan layouts.

None is "best" — it depends on the room and how you live in it. If you're working with a compact or galley space, we've put the specifics on a separate page: small and galley kitchen fitting.

The boring decisions are the ones that cause changes mid-job if they're left late. Where does the sink want to be, and can the waste run there sensibly? Are you moving the hob, and is it gas or induction? How many sockets do you actually want along the worktop — it's always more than people first think — and where do the lights, extractor and integrated appliances need power?

Deciding services early means the first-fix plumbing and electrics go in once, in the right places, rather than being chased back out when the units arrive. It's also where an honest conversation up front saves money: some changes are quick, others bring in more work, and it's better to know which is which before you've ordered.

When you're ready, one of us — Paul or Martyn — comes out, measures up properly and talks through the practical options for your room. No showroom, no sales pitch, no design fee. You get a written, itemised quote, and it's fixed before anything is ripped out — the figure you agree is the figure you pay, with nothing bolted on at the end.

You can see the kind of work that follows on our recent kitchen refurbishment in Blackburn and the Sunnyhurst kitchen fit-out in Darwen. It's all part of our wider kitchen fitting and renovation work across Blackburn, Darwen and the surrounding East Lancashire towns.