A kitchen is usually the biggest single job a domestic customer will ever put in front of you, and it’s rarely lost on the fitting. It’s lost on everything around the fitting: the plasterer who needs a day, the stone worktop that takes a fortnight to arrive, the flatpack carcasses nobody priced the assembly of, and the four separate return visits you never charged for.

What follows is a method for pricing that whole sequence. The figures in it are deliberately illustrative — your rates and your suppliers decide your numbers. What transfers is the order you work in and the things you write down before you total anything up.

Survey the room and the paperwork

A kitchen survey is two surveys. One is the room. The other is the customer’s order.

In the room, check and note:

Floor and wall levels. Run a laser across both. Base units on a bowed floor mean packing and scribing all day; a wall out of square eats time on end panels and worktop scribes.
Where the services actually are. Stopcock, gas isolation point, waste run and its fall, the soil stack, and whether the consumer unit has spare ways for new circuits.
What’s moving. A sink or hob staying put is a different job to one crossing the room. A moved sink means a new waste run, and waste runs need fall you may not have under a solid floor.
The ceiling and walls behind the old units. Old tiles usually take a layer of plaster with them. Assume a plastering day until you can prove otherwise.
The extractor route. Ducting through an external wall is straightforward. Ducting across a ceiling void to a soffit is not, and recirculating instead is a conversation to have now, not on fitting day.
Access and storage. Where do 30 flatpack boxes and a range cooker live for a fortnight? Which door does an American fridge-freezer come through?

Then survey the order. Ask for the plan and the full appliance list before you price anything:

Who is supplying the units, and are they rigid or flatpack? Assembling flatpack carcasses is real, chargeable hours — often a day or more on a decent-sized kitchen — and it’s the single most commonly unpriced item on a kitchen quote.
Every appliance by model, not by description. “Integrated dishwasher” tells you nothing; the aperture, the door type and whether it needs a fused spur or a plug do.
Is the hob gas, electric or induction? Gas connection needs a Gas Safe registered engineer, and induction often needs its own circuit.
What’s the worktop? Laminate is cut on site. Stone and composite are templated after the base units are in and level, then fabricated — typically a wait of a week or two — and fitted on a separate visit.

That last point reshapes the whole job, so deal with it next.

Stage it around the worktop gap

Kitchens don’t run start-to-finish in one block. Price them as stages, with the templating wait sitting in the middle:

Rip-out and disposal. Old units, worktops, tiles and flooring, plus appliance disposal. Old kitchens are bulky rather than heavy — you’ll fill a skip faster than you expect.
First fix. Plumbing to the new sink position, waste runs, new circuits and sockets, spurs for integrated appliances, under-cabinet lighting cable, extractor ducting, any radiator move or stud work.
Preparation. Plastering and making good, floor levelling or overboarding, decorating prep on the ceiling and any wall that won’t end up behind a unit.
Base and wall units. Assembly (if flatpack), fitting, levelling, scribing to walls.
Templating. A short visit, then a wait. Nothing else can be finished until the tops land.
Worktop fit and appliance connection. Tops, sink, tap, waste, hob cut-out, then electrical connection and testing, and gas connection by a registered engineer.
Tiling or splashback. After the tops, because it sits on them.
Second fix and finishing. Doors and drawer fronts hung and adjusted, handles, plinths, cornice and pelmet, end panels, silicone, flooring if it goes down last, and a proper handover of the appliance manuals.

The gap at stage five is what catches people out. Write it into the quote as a stated programme — “units fitted week one, templating on completion, worktops fitted approximately two weeks later” — and tell the customer plainly that they’ll be without a sink and hob during it. Customers accept a known gap. They do not accept a surprise one.

Price the coordination, not just your own hands

If you’re bringing in an electrician, a gas engineer and a plasterer, you’re not buying three hours of their time. You’re buying three separate attendances, each with travel and a minimum charge, plus the certification that comes with the notifiable work. Electrical work in a kitchen is notifiable — check the current requirements with your local Building Control or your competent-person scheme rather than assuming.

Get their prices in writing before you quote, and price your own coordination time honestly. Ringing round to rebook a plasterer because the units slipped a day is unpaid work unless you’ve allowed for it.

The items that quietly disappear

Run this list before you add anything up:

Flatpack assembly hours, and checking the delivery against the plan on the day it lands
Appliance and old-unit disposal, including tip fees and permits
New waste run, trap, flexi tails and isolation valves — rarely reusable
Extractor ducting, core drilling and an external grille
Filling old chases and making good where tiles came off
Scribes, packers, end panels and cornice mitres on an out-of-square room
Cutting plinths around a fridge recess and an awkward pipe boxing
Adjusting every soft-close hinge and drawer front properly at the end
Sealing, silicone and a final clean
Your return visit for snagging, and the visit to fit a door that arrived damaged

Materials, labour and customer-supplied units

Price materials from the actual plan and appliance list, and price your labour from a realistic day count per stage — built on your true day rate, not a number that feels about right for a kitchen.

When the customer supplies the units, which on kitchens is common, say so explicitly and set out what you’re not carrying: shortfalls, damaged doors, wrong-handed hinges, and delays waiting on a replacement carcass. You’ll still spend half a morning checking the delivery — price it.

An illustrative shape only, and your numbers will differ:

Labour        8 days @ £300/day (illustrative)      £2,400
Sub-trades    electrician, plasterer, gas connection  £1,150
Materials     sundries, waste, ducting, sealant         £420
Disposal      skip and appliance disposal                £320
Contingency   allowance for concealed defects            £300
                                                     -------
  (units, worktops and appliances supplied by client) £4,590
                                              (+ VAT if registered)

Allow for what’s behind the old kitchen

You can’t see under the sink base or behind the wall units at survey, and that’s where kitchens hide their surprises: a rotten floor under a slow leak, a waste run with no fall, plaster that comes off in sheets, an existing circuit that won’t take the new load.

Handle each one with a named allowance or a stated caveat rather than a vague hedge — the same discipline that applies to any job where you can’t see everything yet. “Price assumes a sound, level floor; latex levelling if required is £X per square metre, agreed before proceeding” is worth far more than “subject to unforeseen works”.

Present it as one readable quote

Itemise by stage, show the programme including the worktop wait, list your inclusions and exclusions, state how long the price holds, and set out staged payments if the job runs over a fortnight. The structure is the same one behind any professional quote, scaled up — and if you also take on bathrooms, the stage-by-stage bathroom method is the same discipline in a smaller room.

If you’re fitting the units yourself, the carpentry side of quoting is where most of your day count sits.

The takeaway

A kitchen is five trades in a queue with a two-week hole in the middle. Survey the room and the customer’s order, stage the job around the worktop templating, price the assembly and coordination you’d otherwise do for free, and name the unknowns instead of hoping. Do that and the biggest job on your books stops being the riskiest one.

Queezy is built for quoting jobs like this on site — itemised area by area, then sent as a branded PDF before you’ve left the drive. Download it free on iPhone.

How to Quote a Kitchen Fit (Step by Step)