Kitchen Supplier Conversation Preparation Checklist

Ask plainly whether this supplier supplies the kitchen only or also fits it, and write the answer down before any design conversation starts.

Nearly every later question about survey, responsibility and remedial work depends on this single distinction, and it is often assumed rather than stated.

Note whether the units are made by this company or bought in from a manufacturer, since that decides who can actually answer a question about a fault.

A supplier reselling a range usually has to refer product questions onwards, which is worth knowing before you rely on a verbal answer given in a showroom.

Ask whether the person designing your kitchen works for the supplier, and whether that same person stays involved once the order has been placed.

Continuity matters, because the details discussed at length in a design appointment are easily lost when a job passes to a different team.

Write down which ranges this supplier can genuinely offer, and ask what happens if you want a door, worktop or fitting from outside what they carry.

Suppliers differ in how far they will step outside their standard offer, and the answer shapes how much of your wish list is realistic in this conversation.

Check whether appliances come through this supplier or are bought by you separately, and ask what details they need from you if you are supplying them.

Integrated appliances have to be designed around, so the supplier needs the details early whoever is actually buying them.

Connecting any appliance to water, gas, ventilation or an electrical supply is work for the relevant qualified trades, and what applies must be confirmed locally.

Ask which trades the supplier arranges and which you are expected to arrange yourself, then list the ones neither of you has mentioned at all.

Kitchens go wrong at the joins between trades, and the gaps only become visible when someone reads the list of who is doing what out loud.

Take a rough sketch of the room with doors, windows, radiators and any chimney breast marked on it, even if it is hand-drawn and only approximately measured.

A rough plan lets the conversation start from your actual room rather than a generic rectangle, and the supplier will survey it properly later anyway.

Photograph the room from every corner and from the doorway, including the ceiling and the floor, and keep the images on a device you can hand over.

Designers notice things in photographs that owners have long stopped seeing, particularly boxing, steps and places where the ceiling changes height.

Note where the sink waste, stopcock, meters, boiler and any visible pipework or extract outlet sit today, and photograph each one close up.

These positions constrain a layout more than anything else in the room, and a design drawn without them is usually redrawn after the survey.

Whether any of these can be moved is a question for the relevant qualified trades, and what applies locally has to be confirmed rather than assumed.

Bring the model information for any appliance you intend to keep, copied from the appliance itself or its paperwork rather than recalled from memory.

Housing sizes and door clearances are set by the appliance, so anything you are keeping is a fixed constraint the designer needs in front of them.

Write down what irritates you about the kitchen you have now, item by item, and take that list rather than trying to recall it under appointment pressure.

Specific complaints produce specific solutions, whereas a general wish for something better tends to produce a standard layout.

Describe who uses the kitchen, whether more than one person cooks at once, and whether anyone finds bending, reaching or standing for long difficult.

How a room is occupied shapes the layout far more than the style discussion does, but it rarely comes up unless the owner raises it first.

Where ease of use is a genuine need, discuss it with a qualified professional rather than relying on a showroom description of a fitting.

Ask how many rounds of changes the design service includes, and what happens if you want to revisit the layout after seeing it drawn out properly.

Revision limits are rarely mentioned unprompted, yet they decide how freely you can change your mind once a drawing exists on paper.

Establish who owns the drawings produced during the appointment, and whether you may take a copy away to think about or to show another trade.

Suppliers differ on this, and being unable to take a drawing away changes how you weigh one proposal against another at home.

Confirm whether the design is being drawn from your rough measurements rather than a survey, and ask what would typically change once the room is measured.

An early drawing is a proposal rather than a manufacturing plan, and treating it as final is one of the most common misunderstandings owners fall into.

Never let an order proceed on your own measurements alone; a site survey by the supplier or installer has to come first.

Notice whether you are being asked to decide anything before leaving, and give yourself permission to take the drawing home and sleep on it.

Kitchen decisions are lived with for a long time, and a showroom is the least reliable place to make them because the setting is unfamiliar.

Ask which items on the drawing would actually appear on the order, and which are shown only to illustrate the idea being described to you.

Accessories, splashbacks, lighting and even handles are frequently drawn for effect and never carried through to the list of items supplied.

Write the answers down during the appointment rather than afterwards, and read the important ones back to check you have understood them the same way.

A showroom conversation covers a great deal quickly, and the details that matter later are usually the ones mentioned in passing.

Look at any rendered image and ask where the light in it is meant to be coming from, then compare that with the windows your room actually has.

Renders are lit generously and evenly, which flatters finishes that read very differently in a room lit from one side only.

Ask for elevations as well as the plan view, because a plan cannot show how high a wall unit sits or what the run looks like from the doorway.

Most regret about heights and proportion comes from decisions taken on a plan, where everything appears comfortably spaced.

Mark the main walkways on the drawing, ask how much space is left between opposing runs, and go and stand in a similar gap at home before agreeing.

Circulation always reads as generous on paper, and the only reliable check is experiencing a comparable gap in a real room.

Circle everything on the visual you had assumed was included, such as flooring, wall finish, lighting, seating or the tap, and ask about each one.

Anything drawn but not supplied quietly becomes yours to arrange, and that assumption tends to surface only once installation is close.

Check that the drawing shows the features your room really has, including boxing, a sloping ceiling, a radiator or an awkward step, and say so if it does not.

Drawings are often produced from a tidy rectangle, and features left off tend to reappear as changes after the survey has taken place.

Treat any colour shown on a screen or a printed sheet as an indication only, and ask for a physical sample to take home and look at in your own light.

Screens, printers and showroom lighting all shift colour, and a finish chosen from an image is a common source of later disappointment.

Ask who removes and disposes of the existing kitchen, and whether that includes lifting flooring, taking off tiling or removing anything fixed to the walls.

Removal is often assumed to be included by the owner and not by the supplier, and it is the very first thing that has to happen.

Establish who templates and supplies the worktop, and whether that is the same company fitting the units or a separate specialist with its own visit.

Worktops are frequently a separate trade with their own conditions, which affects the order in which everything else has to happen.

Ask which plumbing, electrical, gas and ventilation work sits inside the supplier scope and which you are expected to arrange with qualified trades yourself.

The answer tells you who to speak to when a connection point turns out not to suit the layout everyone has agreed.

Treat no answer here as establishing what is permitted; what applies to services work must be confirmed locally with the relevant qualified trades.

Ask who makes good the walls, ceiling and floor where the old kitchen came off, and what condition those surfaces are intended to be left in.

Making good is the most commonly omitted item and the one owners notice most, because it sits at eye level right across the room.

Note that decorating normally follows installation, and ask what state the room is expected to be in before a decorator would sensibly start work.

Agreeing the intended handover condition prevents a later argument about whether patched plaster and filled screw holes were ever included.

Ask who is coordinating the order in which the trades attend, and whether that person is the supplier, the installer, or you without having agreed to it.

Somebody has to hold the sequence together, and when nobody is named it defaults to the owner without anyone saying so out loud.

If coordination does fall to you, agree the order of works with each qualified trade rather than deciding a sequence on your own.

Ask who carries out the measured survey, whether you should be there, and what they will need access to on the day they attend.

Being present lets you point out what a tape measure does not capture, and it is often the last easy chance to raise something.

Establish whether the survey happens before or after the order is placed, and what happens to that order if the survey finds something unexpected.

The sequence tells you how much of the risk sits with you, and it varies considerably from one supplier to another.

Where a survey reveals damp, movement or unsound construction, that finding belongs with a qualified professional rather than a kitchen designer.

Ask at which point the design can no longer be changed without a new order, and write that point down alongside what actually triggers it.

Once components go into manufacture the answer usually changes, and knowing the boundary helps you finish your decisions before it arrives.

Discuss what happens if damp, damaged plaster or unexpected pipework appears once the old kitchen is stripped out, and who decides what is done next.

Something is nearly always found behind an old kitchen, and agreeing in advance how it is handled keeps the job moving rather than stalling.

Damp, decay and unsound plaster are matters for a qualified professional to assess before any new cabinetry is fitted over them.

Confirm which appliance decisions have to be final before the survey, since housings and door clearances are drawn around the particular models chosen.

Changing an appliance after the survey usually changes a unit as well, and that change is far simpler while nothing has been ordered.

Ask for the revised drawing and specification issued after the survey, and read it line by line against the version you agreed in the appointment.

Post-survey adjustments are often made quietly, and comparing the two documents is the simplest way to notice them in time.

Walk the route a delivery would take from the road to the room, noting narrow gates, steps, tight turns and anything that would have to be moved first.

Access problems discovered on delivery day are disruptive out of all proportion, and they are entirely visible in advance if anyone walks the route.

Decide where the boxes will sit before installation, and check that the space is dry, out of the way and not the room being worked in.

Kitchen components are bulky and easily marked, and storing them in the wrong place slows the installation and risks damage.

Ask for an itemised delivery note and plan to check the load against it while the delivery team is still outside your house.

Discrepancies are far easier to resolve at the door than once the vehicle has gone and the packaging has been opened.

Establish whether delivery is to the kerb or into the room, and who is expected to carry heavy items through the house and up any stairs.

Kerbside delivery is common and comes as a genuine surprise, particularly for worktops, tall units and large appliances.

Check where a delivery vehicle can wait, and tell neighbours in advance if the road or a shared access will be obstructed while it unloads.

Shared access and restricted parking cause more delivery trouble than the size of the load itself, and both are foreseeable.

Where a public road, shared drive or communal area is involved, confirm locally what permissions apply before arranging anything.

Ask what protection is provided for floors, stairs and doorways along the route in, and what you are expected to clear or cover yourself.

Damage on the way in is common and much harder to attribute afterwards than to prevent while everything is still covered.

Ask who your point of contact becomes once the order is placed, and how you reach them if something is wrong on the day of installation.

The designer is often no longer involved after the order, and discovering that mid-installation is stressful and slow to resolve.

Ask how a damaged door, panel or worktop section is replaced, and whether installation continues while the replacement is being arranged.

Whether the job pauses or proceeds around the gap makes a large difference to how long you live without a working kitchen.

Ask what happens if small components such as fittings, brackets or trims are short on delivery, and who is responsible for chasing them.

Small missing parts stop an installation as effectively as a missing cabinet, and they are the items most often found short.

Decide whether to keep spare door, panel or worktop offcuts, and ask where the finish reference is recorded for a repair some years from now.

A recorded finish reference is what makes a later repair possible, and it is easily lost the moment packaging is thrown away.

Collect the paperwork issued at handover, including appliance documents, fitting instructions and care information, and keep it all in one place.

These documents matter most at the moment they cannot be found, which is usually long after the kitchen went in.

Ask what aftercare the supplier offers, what it covers, and what you would need to show if you raised something with them later on.

Understanding what is offered, and in what form it is recorded, is more useful than any reassurance given verbally across a desk.

Cover offered by a supplier or manufacturer varies considerably; read what is actually issued in writing rather than a spoken description of it.