A review: finding a good kitchen fitter in Edinburgh

The challenge I faced was this: I needed a new floor and a new kitchen. I had researched this a few years back and none of the kitchen suppliers I could find would touch the floor.

Which would do first? Fix the floor or install a kitchen? It seemed very silly not to do both, at the same time, in the same project.

It was TV ads (gasp) for RatedPeople that persuaded me to give the service a go. It worked pretty well.

You begin by describing your challenge. My partner and I worked on the document so the tradespeople would know all the vital details; kitchen, floor and we’ve no car.

That last point is important as when we had the bathroom fixed we had to lug tiles and paint around ourselves. We couldn’t do that again as the local B&Q has closed down.

The RatedPeople system works by then putting your job description out as an alert to tradesmen who have joined the site. I believe they have to pay RatedPeople to respond to you. You get three responses.

We had all three kitchen fitters over to our small kitchen for a look. Everyone said they could do it but the experience was different. Some wanted lots of details whereas others just needed the big picture.

Of the three we got two quotes. Surprisingly one of the tradesmen (a large company, actually) pulled out.

In the end we settled for Bann Joinery. RatedPeople made this process easier by sharing other customers reviews of Bann. These reviews looked real; one terrible review but the rest giving lots of stars. We could also check their main Bann Joinery site. Okay; it still has some blank WordPress pages but it was enough to convince us that they could tackle the challenge.

It took a week to strip, rebuild and paint up the kitchen. Work started on a Tuesday and we were repacking the new units with our bits and pieces by the Tuesday after.

A saving grace of being on the top floor (level 4) of an apartment block (and we didn’t no carrying; Banns did all that) was there was space outside the front door to stack everything. No amount of Tetris in the flat would have worked to free up space.

Here’s how the kitchen appeared before the project.

I took one day off work to hang around the first morning and that was it. These photographs were taken as we came home after work to see how the project had progressed. The pictures, I trust, show the steady progress.