Kitchen Procurement Checklist for Builders and Contractors

A kitchen is a large number of small components arriving at once, at a point in the programme where several trades are already waiting. It rewards process and punishes improvisation. This is the checklist we would work to, stage by stage — use it as it stands or strip it down to the ten lines that matter on your jobs.

Stage 1 — Enquiry

The purpose of this stage is to establish whether the kitchen you have in mind can exist in the room you have. Get it wrong here and everything downstream inherits the error.

• Measure the room properly — wall lengths at more than one height, window and door positions, ceiling height, and the position of every service.
• Establish who is deciding. A private client, a landlord and a developer all make decisions on different timescales. Know whose sign-off you are waiting for.
• Fix the layout before the finish. Cabinet positions determine plumbing and electrics; door colour determines nothing structural.
• Send it in early. A sketch with measurements, a schedule or a previous quotation is enough to get a price. There is a free plan review service, quotations are free, and we aim to reply within one working day.

If the job is a repeat specification — a landlord's standard kitchen, a developer's plot type — say so at enquiry stage and quote the whole run rather than one at a time. Trade and project pricing is assessed individually according to the products, quantities and requirements of each project.

Stage 2 — Specification and quotation

Turn the layout into a line-by-line list. Every line needs a type, a size and a quantity, and the sections should follow the order the kitchen gets fitted: base cabinets, wall cabinets, tall cabinets, doors and drawer fronts, panels and trims, worktops, hardware, then appliances, sink and tap.

Two things to get right at this stage, because both are expensive to fix later. First, appliances by make and model — the model determines the housing size, the aperture and the worktop cut-out, so "integrated dishwasher" is not a specification. Second, worktops as separate run lengths rather than a single total, because worktops are supplied as pre-finished lengths and three 2.4m runs need a different board count from one 7.2m run.

If a bundle covers the job, it does most of the specification work for you and arrives as one coherent order. See trade kitchen bundles for how they are used on project work; prices and inclusions change, so check the collection for what is current.

Stage 3 — Before you place the order

The rigid decision deserves a moment's thought rather than a default. Rigid cabinets arrive built and glued, which takes assembly time off the programme and reduces what can go wrong on site — but they occupy far more space, so an occupied house with one spare bedroom is a different proposition from an empty plot. Rigid assembly does not include installation; your team still fits the kitchen.

Where to deliver: site, yard or customer

Whichever you choose, decide it before the order goes in rather than the week before delivery. Larger kitchen and worktop deliveries go out on a dedicated service with the day arranged with you, and delivery timing is confirmed when the order or quotation is finalised. Delivery is fully tracked across mainland UK; Scottish Highlands and Islands, Northern Ireland, offshore and certain remote postcodes may be excluded or surcharged, always confirmed before an order is processed. The delivery page has the detail.

One practical point on access: measure the route in, not just the room. A worktop board does not turn on a half-landing, and a tall larder unit supplied rigid needs the height to be stood up at the far end of the journey as well as the near one.

Stage 4 — Checking the delivery on arrival

Ten minutes on the day is worth a week of chasing later. Do it while the delivery is fresh, not on the morning the fitter starts.

• Tick every line against the order confirmation. Not from memory, not from the drawing — from the confirmation.
• Open the ends of worktop packs. Corner and edge damage hides under packaging and is the commonest single issue.
• Look at the doors as a set, in daylight, for colour and sheen variation as well as damage.
• Check appliance model numbers against the specification, not just the box count.
• Count the small items — handles, hinges, fixings, plinth. These are the ones that go missing and the ones that stop a fit.
• Photograph anything questionable immediately, in place, before it is moved.
• Report damage or shortages within 48 hours with photographs and the order reference, to the trade team.

That 48-hour window is the reason the check cannot wait for the fitter. If a kitchen is delivered on Tuesday and looked at properly the following Monday, you have used up the window on storage.

The items that stall a fit

Kitchens rarely stop for want of a cabinet. They stop for want of something small that nobody thought to count.

• Drawer fronts. A three-drawer base needs three fronts, not one door — the classic schedule error.
• End panels. Every exposed cabinet end, including the end of an island or peninsula run.
• Plinth. Easy to under-order on an L or U-shaped kitchen once returns are counted.
• Handles. Counted per door and per drawer front; a shortfall of four stops the whole handover.
• Waste kits, trap kits and sink fixings. Small, cheap, and a hard stop when absent — check the accessories range as you build the order.
• Appliance fixing kits and integration doors. Integrated dishwashers and washing machines need a decor door and the right fixing bracket, and neither appears on a layout.
• Upstands. Ordered later, from a different batch, and no longer a match.

Ordering replacements mid-job

Something will get damaged. Handle it as a process rather than a panic.

Identify the item precisely — the product name and size from your order confirmation, not a description of what it looks like. Photograph the damage before anything is moved. Send both to the trade team with your order reference and say clearly whether the fit is being held for it, because that changes how the replacement is handled. Then keep fitting around it: a missing door does not stop cabinets being levelled and worktops going down.

The best defence is a small buffer on a repeat specification — one spare door of each common size, a length of plinth and a pack of handles held back on a multi-plot scheme turns a stalled fit into a shrug.

Keeping the customer's expectations straight

This is the conversation that prevents the awkward one later. Brooklands supplies kitchens; it does not install them, and it does not cut, joint, template or fabricate worktops. All of that is site work carried out by you or your fitter.

Say that plainly to your customer at quotation stage, in writing, alongside what is included in your own price. The specific items worth naming: worktop cutting, jointing and cut-outs; sink and tap installation; appliance connection; making good, tiling and decoration; and the removal of the old kitchen. Every one of those is something a customer may assume is covered by "a new kitchen", and every one is cheaper to clarify in an email than to argue about on the last day of the job. Our page for builders, fitters and contractors sets out what we supply so you can point at it.

Frequently asked questions