New doors and worktops or a full new kitchen? An Eastleigh decision guide
A practical way to decide between refreshing an existing kitchen and replacing it, with the checks I make before recommending either.
Not every tired kitchen needs ripping out. In plenty of Eastleigh houses the cabinets behind the doors are perfectly sound, and new doors, worktops and handles would give most of the change for much less upheaval. In others, a refresh would just be putting new fronts on a kitchen that is falling apart. This guide is the set of checks I go through before recommending one or the other.
1. Look inside the sink unit
The base of the sink unit is the first place a kitchen fails. Open it, empty it and press the floor of the cabinet. If the chipboard is swollen, soft or crumbling from old leaks, that unit at least needs replacing. If several units near the sink and dishwasher are the same, it is a sign the whole run has been taking water for years.
2. Test the hinges and drawer runners
Open every door and drawer. Hinges that have pulled out of the carcass side, or drawers that drop and scrape, tell you how well the boxes are holding together. One or two can be repaired. If most of them have gone, new doors will simply hang badly on the same tired carcasses.
3. Check the carcasses are a standard size
Replacement doors are easiest when the existing units follow common sizes. Many older kitchens do, but some fitted kitchens from the 1980s and 1990s, and some custom builds, use odd widths. Measure a few doors and compare them with what replacement-door suppliers list before you get your heart set on a refresh.
4. Decide whether the layout works
This is the big one. If the sink, cooker and fridge are where you want them and you aren't fighting the room every day, a refresh makes sense. If you want to move the sink to a window, fit a dishwasher where there isn't room, or open the kitchen into the back room, no amount of new doors will fix it. In Eastleigh's narrow back-addition kitchens, the layout question usually decides everything.
5. Consider the worktop separately
Worktops wear faster than units. A new laminate or solid timber worktop on sound units, with a new sink and tap, can make a kitchen feel very different. If you are thinking about stone or quartz, those are templated and fitted by specialists after the units are in place, so the units underneath need to be level and solid first.
6. Think about appliances
Integrated appliances need housings of a particular size. If your fridge or oven is due for replacement and the new one won't fit the existing housing, that can tip the decision toward a new run of units.
What a full fit involves
If you go for a new kitchen, the order is usually: strip-out, any plumbing, gas and electrical first-fix by the relevant trades, then I fit carcasses, wall units, worktops, doors, drawers, plinths and panels, then the trades return to connect up. A refresh, by comparison, is often a matter of days and the kitchen stays in use for much of it.
If you're not sure which way to go, send me photos of the inside of the sink unit, a couple of hinges and the room as a whole through the estimate form and I'll give you my honest view. More on how I work is on the kitchen fitting page, and if you're in a terraced house, the related article on planning a kitchen in an Eastleigh terrace is worth reading first.