Kitchen Renovation Carpentry

A kitchen reno is a few different trades taking turns in the one room. The plumber, the sparky, the benchtop crew and the tiler all get their go, and somewhere in the middle of all that is the carpenter who frames it up, hangs the cabinets and makes everything sit straight. That's the part we do.

So to be clear about what you're hiring us for: it's the carpentry and the install. Cabinets, benchtop fitting, the wall and floor work, and the fit-out that ties it together. We don't touch the plumbing, the electrical, the stone or the tiling. That's licensed work and it goes to the trades who do it day in day out. What we're good at is the timber side, and working in around everyone else so the job doesn't stall.

I'm Dave. All Round Carpentry is a small owner-run outfit based in the Illawarra, and we cover Helensburgh down through Wollongong to Nowra and the Shoalhaven. We're licensed and insured and we've been a Bunnings install partner for over seven years, so we've assembled a lot of flat-pack kitchens by now.

Cabinets, flat-pack and custom

Most of the kitchens we hang are flat-pack. You pick the colour and the layout, the boxes get delivered, and we assemble them, level them and fix them so the doors line up and the drawers run properly.

That sounds straightforward and it usually isn't, especially in an older Illawarra home where the walls aren't plumb and the floor falls away across the room. A fair chunk of the day goes on packing and scribing the cabinets so they sit clean against a wall that bows. It's not the glamorous part of the job but it's the part that decides whether the finished kitchen looks right.

Where flat-pack doesn't suit — a galley that's an awkward width, a tricky corner, an island that has to sit over the existing joists — we'll build custom cabinetry to fit the room instead. Either way the carcasses get screwed back to the studs and noggins. I've pulled a few out over the years that were only glued to the plasterboard, and you don't want that.

For benchtops we fit the timber and laminate tops ourselves. That's cutting to size, joining them up, cutting out for the sink and cooktop, and scribing the back edge in to the wall.

Stone is a separate trade. Engineered and natural stone benchtops get templated and installed by the stone crew, and that only happens once the cabinets are in and sitting dead level. They're fussy about it, and they should be, because you can't pack a stone slab out afterwards the way you can timber. So we make sure the cabinets are right first. It saves them a headache and it saves you money.

Walls, floors and the structural bits

A lot of the older houses around here — the post-war fibro, the brick veneers, the weatherboard places near the coast — were built with the kitchen closed off in its own room. Opening that up to the living area is easily the most common thing people ask us about.

That usually means taking a wall out, and the first thing I check is whether it's load-bearing. If it is, we frame in a beam and posts sized for the span before anything comes down. A change like that nearly always needs sign-off, either through Wollongong, Shellharbour, Kiama or Shoalhaven council or a private certifier, and I'll tell you honestly what your job needs rather than glossing over it to land the work.

Floors catch people out too. When you lift the old vinyl or lino, what's underneath has often had a hard life — soft boards, a patched section where the old kitchen stood, sometimes a bit of rot near the sink where a tap's been leaking slowly for years without anyone noticing. We repair or re-sheet the subfloor so the new flooring goes down over something solid.

The rest of the carpentry covers the bits that make a kitchen work day to day:

• Pantry framing and fit-out, with shelving fixed to carry real weight
• Splashback prep, so the tiler or glass installer has a flat, sound surface to start on
• Hanging doors, fitting kickboards, end panels and trim
• Patching plaster and lining where the old layout has left holes in the wall

How it runs and what it costs

The honest answer on timing is that your kitchen's out of action for a couple of weeks on most jobs, even though our actual time on the tools is closer to a few days. That's because the trades go in a set order — strip-out, then us for the cabinets, then the sparky and plumber for rough-in and connection, then the benchtop template and install, then tiling, then us back at the end for the final fit-off. We're the ones chasing the others along to keep it moving instead of letting it sit idle for a week.

On cost, the carpentry and install part is usually a few thousand dollars for a straightforward flat-pack fit. It goes up once a wall's coming out, there's custom cabinetry involved, or the floor needs proper repair. I won't quote a number over the phone. I'd rather come and have a look, and when I quote I split out what's our carpentry from what the plumber, sparky, stone and tiler will charge, so you can see what the whole thing actually costs and not just my part of it.

If you've got a kitchen you want to open up or freshen up, give me a call on 0414 007 351 and we'll have a chat. I'm happy to come and have a look and tell you what's involved. No pressure either way.