Build standards

What kitfit builds every kit to: the survey it needs and what that means for the fit, the tolerances and allowances it works to, how each unit is built and what it is made of, what kitfit checks in every design, and what is the customer's. Each design's own drawings and quote say what was assumed for it. Prices are not here: they come with each quote.

These are kitfit's current working standards: the figures it builds to today, which may change.

What kitfit builds, and what it can't yet

kitfit builds base units, tall units, wall-hung units, open shelving units, plinths, decks (raised platforms for machines), end and gable panels, loose shelves, fillers, worktops, splashbacks, spaces for appliances (a range cooker's and a cooker hood's among them) and hobs set in its worktops, with hinged doors, drawers, lift-up flaps, pull-outs and fixed panels as fronts, and housing units for built-in ovens, double ovens, compact ovens, steam ovens, microwaves, coffee machines and warming drawers and integrated fridges, freezers, fridge freezers and wine coolers, and the doors on integrated fridges, freezers, fridge freezers, wine coolers, dishwashers, washers and washer dryers, by their make and model. Anything else in a layout goes to kitfit's team to make or source. What it can't do yet, so a layout can be planned round it:

• No kitchen islands or peninsulas. Every unit stands against one of the survey's walls, its back to that wall: nothing stands free in the room or with its back or side to the room.
• No corner units. Every carcass is a straight box.
• Fronts are flat board in kitfit's decors: no painted, solid wood, glazed or framed (shaker) fronts.
• Rear edges are cut straight. Against a wall that is not flat, the gap behind a unit is packed out at fitting, not cut to the wall.
• Ceilings are known along the walls. A ceiling that slopes away from a wall, as under stairs or in a loft, is not modelled; a tape survey takes one ceiling height for the whole room, so a sloping or stepped ceiling needs a scan.

These are all coming. A customer who needs one of them can ask for it through their AI, so kitfit can prioritise it.

The survey and the fit

Every measurement in a survey carries its accuracy (plus or minus, in mm), and kitfit builds exactly to what it is given. Where a unit meets the room -- a wall at its end, the wall behind it, the floor, the ceiling, a door frame -- the accuracy of that measurement decides how the edge is made:

• Measured to within +/-2 mm: the edge is cut to the room's measured shape (a filler cut to the wall, a scribe cut to the ceiling).
• Measured less accurately: the edge gets slack covering the measurement's whole plus-or-minus band, and kitfit supplies an oversize filler for the customer to cut on site: as wide as the widest the gap gets, plus the slack, plus 5 mm to cut back, and never narrower than 25 mm.
• Everything else in the room (pipes, sockets, door swings, windows) is kept clear of by its own accuracy.

By how the room was measured

• kitfit's scan: a professional scan booked through kitfit, carrying kitfit's survey reference. Edges measured within +/-2 mm are cut to the room's shape, and kitfit guarantees the fit. This is the only survey kitfit guarantees the fit on. A survey that says it is kitfit's without a reference kitfit holds is taken as the customer's.
• Phone lidar, or any scan the customer makes: the customer states each measurement's accuracy and vouches for the survey. kitfit builds exactly to it by the same rules (cut to shape within +/-2 mm, slack and site-cut fillers beyond), and the fit is the customer's. A scan-grade survey gives the wall's surface no more than 50 mm apart both ways, and the floor and ceiling heights along each wall no more than 100 mm apart.
• Tape measure: kitfit takes every length and height as good to +/-5 mm and where each service is (a socket, a pipe) as good to +/-10 mm, and the walls as flat and plumb, the floor as level and the corners as square unless their angles are given. So every edge where a unit meets the room gets 10 mm of slack, and its filler comes oversize (at least 25 mm), to be cut to fit on site. The fit is the customer's: kitfit builds to their numbers and does not guarantee it.

Which to use: phone lidar is fine for a rough first measure. For the survey a kit is built from, a tape measure is always the better approach. For a guaranteed fit, book kitfit's professional scan.

kitfit underwrites only what it supplies. What it says about a worktop, appliance or fitting the customer supplies, and about what is made round it, is information, with no fit guarantee, whatever the survey.

Tolerances and allowances

Fronts and boards

• Doors and drawer fronts are 18 mm thick, with a 3 mm gap between neighbouring fronts on a unit. A front adds its thickness to the unit's depth.
• Carcasses -- sides, top, bottom, fixed shelves and back -- are 18 mm board. The back is a full-height structural panel of the same board.
• Where a layout leaves a thickness out: end and gable panels 18 mm, plinths 18 mm, fillers 18 mm.

Fillers and scribes

• A gap of up to 100 mm from a unit to a wall or to the next unit is closed with a filler: cut to the wall's shape where that is measured exact, oversize to cut on site where it is not. A wider gap is left open and said.
• A filler, tall unit or panel may stand up to 10 mm above the surveyed ceiling: that much is scribed off at fitting. More than that is a change to the unit, which only the customer makes.

Plinths and levelling

• The plinth's face stands 50 mm behind the fronts above it.
• Base and tall units stand on adjustable plinth legs, clipped to the plinth, for plinths from 53 to 198 mm high. Each leg screws up or down within its range to level the units on the floor as it is. A taller plinth is made by kitfit's team.

Appliances

• Behind a washing machine or dryer whose maker gives no figure, kitfit leaves 50 mm for its hoses and plug.
• A machine may stand up to 30 mm proud of the units beside it to get that room: it is accepted and said. Further out is a conflict for the customer to settle.
• An appliance figure in the layout within 5 mm of the maker's is taken as rounding; further apart, it is a conflict.
• An appliance named by its make and model takes its maker's figures, from its installation drawing.
• A built-in one (ovens, double ovens, compact ovens, steam ovens, microwaves, coffee machines and warming drawers) is housed in a tall, base or wall unit kitfit makes round the opening its maker gives for where it goes: its width between the unit's sides, its height between the shelf it stands on (or the unit's bottom) and the panel over it (or the unit's top), its depth, with the fronts above and below it sized to what is left. A fixed shelf carries an appliance of up to 70 kg.
• Where its maker asks for air behind it, the back is left out behind its opening and the panels on the air's way stop short of the back by the gap the maker asks for, a slot the full width, at least 40 mm where the maker gives only the air's area; air in through the plinth is a vent routed in the plinth in front of it.
• An integrated one takes a door kitfit makes on its own door, within its maker's limits for the door's height, width, thickness and weight, its weight worked from the board's area and thickness at 680 kg/m3 and 0.3 kg for a handle; heavier or lighter than its maker allows is refused. On a sliding fixing the door hangs on kitfit's hinges; on a fixed one it is fixed to the appliance's door; either way by the kit supplied with the appliance. A door hung on the appliance's own hinges (an integrated washing machine) is bored for their cups at its maker's figures, 21.5 mm in from its edge where the maker gives none, on both sides so it hangs whichever way the appliance's door opens. An integrated fridge or freezer is housed as a built-in one is, two doors on a fridge-freezer at the heights its maker allows with its gap between; a dishwasher, washing machine or under-counter fridge stands in its space under the worktop, its door level with the fronts beside it.
• A built-in cooker hood (integrated, telescopic or canopy) is housed in a wall unit kitfit makes round it, of the width, depth and height its maker draws: no bottom where the hood fills the unit's underside, else the maker's cut-out in the bottom; the hole for its duct in the top and any fixed shelf over it, at the maker's place and size, or 10 mm wider than its outlet where the maker gives no hole; a pull-out visor's strip of front at the maker's size. The hood's weight counts on the unit's hangers.
• An appliance space carries no worktop: the worktop over one is carried by the units, panels and walls either side and the gable panels kitfit adds inside it. Across appliance spaces a laminate worktop spans up to 650 mm with nothing under it, and up to 1250 mm (two appliances side by side) with its back edge on a batten kitfit makes, 40 mm high from its board and screwed to the wall; compact and stone span no more than one appliance. A space at the open end of a run needs a gable panel or a unit to carry the worktop's end. Any other gap with nothing under the worktop, between units or between a unit and a wall (an empty corner), is held to the same spans, its batten made with the unit beside it.

Hobs and range cookers

Each figure is the hob's or range cooker's maker's where kitfit knows its model; where it doesn't, kitfit's below. Breaking one of these is a conflict, as each is about fire or heat:

• A hob's cut-out at least 50 mm from the worktop's front edge, 60 mm from the wall behind and 90 mm from a side wall or tall unit; a range cooker the same 90 mm from a wall or tall cupboard beside it above hotplate level.
• Nothing combustible -- a wall unit, shelf or open shelf -- directly over a hob or range cooker closer than 700 mm; beside it, within its side clearance, no lower than 400 mm above it.
• A cooker hood at least 650 mm above an electric or induction hob and 750 mm above a gas hob, or the higher of the hob's and the hood's makers' figures for its fuel.
• No solid-wood splashback behind a hob or range cooker.
• What is under a hob clears its body: the top of a drawer under it at its maker's distance below the worktop's top, else 15 mm below its body, and an oven's top its maker's distance, else 30 mm below its body.

The unit under a hob is built round it: where its body reaches the unit, the unit has no top and the worktop closes it, as the trade builds one; a separator where the hob's maker asks for one over a drawer; the back set in and left out at the top for the air its maker asks for. kitfit doesn't connect gas: under a gas hob, kitfit sets the back 40 mm in from the wall and stops it 60 mm under the worktop, room for the Gas Safe registered engineer's supply pipe and isolation valve. Under a venting hob, by its maker's rules: ducted, the back set in for its duct and the drawers no deeper than the maker allows, the back cut where its outlet meets it; recirculating, the gap behind the back its maker asks for and the air back into the room through the plinth; its drawers and shelves removable, for its fan and duct to be reached.

These are warnings, the customer's to weigh:

• A glass splashback (always toughened glass) closer than 110 mm to a gas hob's back edge.
• A socket or switch directly over a hob: IET guidance and NHBC advise against it, and the electrician has the final say.
• A cooker hood narrower than the hob, or no hood: the room then needs its extract elsewhere.

Cutting, edging and drilling

• Every part is cut, edged and drilled by CNC machines at kitfit's fabricator: drilled panels up to 3660 x 850 mm, from 8 to 50 mm thick; edges banded up to 3660 mm long.
• Machining from opposite faces of a board always leaves at least 4 mm of board between them.
• Joint connectors sit 50 mm in from each end of a joint and no more than 300 mm apart.
• Edging matches the decor and is 23 mm wide. Carcass edges are 2 mm thick, else 0.8 mm; door and drawer front edges 0.8 mm, else 2 mm: the first the decor's edging comes in, a stocked size before a special-order one.
• A cable groove, where the layout asks for one, runs up the back's rear face, 12 mm wide and 8 mm deep.

Handles

• Each front opened by a handle takes the handle style chosen -- its maker, range and finish -- in the size of it that suits the front: a handle across a front about 50% of its width, an upright one about 25% of its height, the nearest size that leaves 40 mm clear at each end across or 60 mm upright, else the shortest. A knob, or a style made in one size, is the same on every front. The customer can give any front its own handle, or turn it.
• Upright on a door, 40 mm in from the edge it opens from, its end 60 mm from the top (from the bottom where the door is above 1200 mm from the floor). Across a drawer, pull-out or flap, centred: on its height up to 250 mm high, else 80 mm below its top. Handles across neighbouring fronts whose top edges are within 2 mm of each other line up at one height.
• An edge pull runs along a front's top edge (its bottom edge above eye level), centred on a drawer, on a door its end 40 mm from the edge it opens from; it is fixed with self-tapping screws into its back, into pilot holes drilled for them where its maker gives where they go.

Assembly headroom

A carcass assembled lying down is tipped upright about a bottom edge, which needs headroom of its side's diagonal plus 25 mm. Where the ceiling is lower, the unit is still made, and the customer is told how to assemble it instead: upright in place, or tipped up without its plinth and lifted on.

Construction

Carcasses

• The sides run the full height; the top, bottom and fixed shelves sit between them; the back is a full-height structural panel between the sides, which is what keeps the box square.
• Joints are knock-down connectors in factory-drilled pockets: nothing is drilled at home, and a unit can be taken apart and put back together.
• Grain runs upright on sides and backs; along the unit on tops, bottoms and shelves.

Edges

• Sides: front edge banded in the decor's matching edging; rear, top and bottom edges sealed with a thin tape.
• Tops: front edge banded in the decor's matching edging; rear and end edges sealed with a thin tape.
• Bottoms: front edge banded in the decor's matching edging; rear and end edges sealed with a thin tape.
• Shelves: front edge banded in the decor's matching edging; rear and end edges sealed with a thin tape.
• Backs: top, bottom and end edges sealed with a thin tape.
• An edge inside a joint is left raw: it is never seen.

Doors, flaps and hinges

• Hinges per door, by its height: 2 up to 900 mm, 3 up to 1600 mm, 4 up to 2000 mm and 5 above that; and by its weight, at 13 kg a square metre of front, whichever asks more: 2 up to 5 kg, 3 up to 9 kg, 4 up to 15 kg and 5 up to 22 kg, and over that the next. The weights are Hafele's chart for its Metalla hinge, the strictest of the charts of the hinges kitfit fits, so each tier's hinge hangs within its maker's chart; GTV prints no chart, and its doors take the same count.
• A single door on a unit wider than 650 mm is made a pair opening from the middle. A flap is hinged at the top.
• Where the layout does not say which side a door hinges on, it hinges on the first of these that applies: next to a wall; next to a taller unit beside its whole height; away from a neighbouring single door, so the pair opens from the middle; at the end of the unit nearer the end of the run; else on the left. Units within 5 mm of each other are neighbours. The customer confirms each.
• Every door, unless one of the below applies: KF-HW-001 soft-close hinge, 110 degree (Blum CLIP top BLUMOTION 110).
• Every door, unless one of the below applies: KF-HW-122 soft-close hinge, 110 degree (Hafele Metalla 310).
• Every door, unless one of the below applies: KF-HW-127 soft-close hinge, 102 degree, with its mounting plate (GTV).
• Where a door must open wider than the zero-protrusion hinge allows: KF-HW-130 wide-angle hinge, 170 degree (Blum CLIP top 170).
• Where a door must open wider than the zero-protrusion hinge allows: KF-HW-128 soft-close wide-angle hinge, 165 degree, with its mounting plate (GTV).
• On a door that opens by pushing: KF-HW-003 hinge without spring, 110 degree, for push to open (Blum CLIP top 110).
• Where pull-outs or baskets stand behind the door, or the door opens against a wall or a taller unit: KF-HW-002 soft-close hinge, 155 degree, zero protrusion (Blum CLIP top BLUMOTION 155).
• Where pull-outs or baskets stand behind the door, or the door opens against a wall or a taller unit: KF-HW-125 soft-close hinge, 155 degree, zero protrusion (Hafele Metalla 310).

Drawers, pull-outs and baskets

• Drawers: full-extension soft-close drawer boxes, the longest of 270 to 650 mm that fits the unit's inside depth, rated 40 kg or 70 kg by what it carries; a drawer is taken to carry 20 kg unless the layout says more.
• Drawers: full-extension soft-close drawer boxes, the longest of 270 to 650 mm that fits the unit's inside depth, rated 40 kg or 70 kg by what it carries; a drawer is taken to carry 20 kg unless the layout says more.
• Drawers: full-extension soft-close drawer boxes, the longest of 550 to 600 mm that fits the unit's inside depth, rated 70 kg by what it carries; a drawer is taken to carry 20 kg unless the layout says more.
• Drawers: full-extension soft-close drawer boxes, the longest of 270 to 500 mm that fits the unit's inside depth, rated 40 kg by what it carries; a drawer is taken to carry 20 kg unless the layout says more.
• Drawers: full-extension soft-close drawer boxes, the longest of 550 to 600 mm that fits the unit's inside depth, rated 70 kg by what it carries; a drawer is taken to carry 20 kg unless the layout says more.
• Drawers: full-extension soft-close drawer boxes, the longest of 270 to 500 mm that fits the unit's inside depth, rated 40 kg by what it carries; a drawer is taken to carry 20 kg unless the layout says more.
• Drawers: full-extension soft-close drawer boxes, the longest of 270 to 550 mm that fits the unit's inside depth, rated by what it carries; a drawer is taken to carry 20 kg unless the layout says more.
• Pull-outs: full-extension soft-close runners from 250 to 750 mm, rated 40 kg or 70 kg by what they carry; a pull-out is taken to carry 20 kg unless the layout says more.
• Pull-outs: full-extension soft-close runners from 250 to 750 mm, rated 40 kg or 70 kg by what they carry; a pull-out is taken to carry 20 kg unless the layout says more.
• Pull-outs: full-extension soft-close runners from 250 to 600 mm, rated by what they carry; a pull-out is taken to carry 20 kg unless the layout says more.
• Pull-outs: full-extension soft-close runners from 270 to 650 mm, rated by what they carry; a pull-out is taken to carry 20 kg unless the layout says more.
• Baskets: a 40 litre rectangular laundry basket, 670 x 440 x 256 mm, a standard part sold in UK shops, on heavy-duty runners from 500 to 650 mm.
• Push to open with soft close on drawers and pull-outs, sized by the drawer's weight: KF-HW-037 push to open with soft close for light drawers (Blum TIP-ON BLUMOTION) from 0 to 20 kg, KF-HW-038 push to open with soft close for medium drawers (Blum TIP-ON BLUMOTION) from 15 to 40 kg and KF-HW-039 push to open with soft close for heavy drawers (Blum TIP-ON BLUMOTION) from 35 to 70 kg.
• A lift-up flap gets a stay sized by the unit's height and the flap's weight; a flap is taken to weigh 13 kg per square metre unless its weight is given.

Hanging, fixing and shelves

• Wall units, and open shelf units hung above the floor with nothing under them, hang on concealed cabinet hangers, a right and a left, on a wall rail: rated 130 kg a pair by their maker, with up to 16 mm of adjustment side to side, 15 mm up and down and 16 mm in and out once hung, to line the units up.
• A hung unit's back is set 16 mm in from the wall, the space its hangers need behind it to hook onto their rail. What it weighs with its contents, taken at 0.4 kg a litre of its inside (an open shelf unit's too, as no standard gives an open shelf's load), may use no more than 80% of its hangers' rating: a unit over that empty is refused, and one over it only when full is told how much it may hold.
• Every tall unit is fixed to the wall with KF-HW-060 anti-tip bracket (Hafele SH1) and KF-HW-062 anti-tip bracket wall plate (Hafele SH1), so it cannot tip forward, and so is an open shelf unit standing on the floor, a worktop or another unit, taller than 686 mm, and a deck carrying a washer and dryer stacked one on the other: the bracket is fitted before the unit is loaded.
• Wall fixings come in the kit, chosen for what each wall is made of. A base or tall unit is screwed to the wall through its back with 2 screws; a hung unit's rail with a screw near each end and none more than 300 mm apart; an anti-tip bracket's wall plate with 2 screws. Into brick, block or concrete they go into KF-HW-101 universal wall plug, 7 x 30 mm (Rawlplug UNO); into aircrete, KF-HW-102 high-performance wall plug, 8 x 40 mm, for aircrete (Fischer DuoPower); through plasterboard on dabs, through the board and its gap into a plug in the masonry behind, the gap packed solid at each fixing; on a stud wall, into the timber studs or noggins, never the plasterboard alone. Each screw is the shortest of kitfit's, 50 mm to 100 mm long, that passes what it fixes and what lines the wall (30 mm for plasterboard on dabs) and grips the wall at least 35 mm (30 mm into a stud). Where the survey doesn't say what a wall is made of, its fixings are for masonry, and the design says so for the customer to correct.
• A base or tall unit standing above the floor with no plinth or anything else under it stands on the plinth's adjustable legs, a row at its front and one at its back, none more than 600 mm apart, and the design warns that it has no plinth in front.
• Adjustable shelves sit on KF-HW-059 shelf support pin, 5 mm (Hafele).
• A deck carries 120 kg for each appliance standing on it, unless the appliance's own weight is given, and 150 kg with none.
• Every hardware part kitfit supplies is a standard part, replaceable from kitfit by its code.

Materials

• Carcasses and fronts: decorative faced chipboard, 18 mm, in the decor chosen from kitfit's decors, with matching edging.
• Worktops and splashbacks kitfit supplies, cut by a fabricator from kitfit's own full-size template of the room: solid oak (worktops 40 and 27 mm, splashbacks 27 and 22 mm); prime solid oak (worktops 40 mm); full stave solid oak (worktops 40 mm); solid walnut (worktops 40 and 27 mm, splashbacks 27 mm); solid iroko (worktops 40 mm); solid beech (worktops 40 mm); solid ash (worktops 40 mm); laminate (worktops 38 mm); premium laminate (worktops 40 mm); slim premium laminate (worktops 22 mm); compact laminate (worktops 12 mm, splashbacks 12 mm); quartz (worktops 20 and 30 mm, splashbacks 20 mm); premium quartz (worktops 20 and 30 mm, splashbacks 20 mm); granite (worktops 20 and 30 mm, splashbacks 20 mm); sintered stone (worktops 20 mm, splashbacks 12 and 20 mm); porcelain (worktops 20 mm, splashbacks 20 mm); toughened glass (splashbacks 6 mm).
• A worktop or splashback the customer's own fabricator makes is built round from the layout's figures, as information.

Design basics

The figures a first layout is planned within. Enforced figures are kitfit's own checks and how it builds; advice is kitfit's draft guidance from common UK practice, which nothing checks.

• 12 to 40 mm: worktop thickness, by its material: least and most kitfit supplies (a worktop's height in the layout is its thickness). Enforced: breaking it is a conflict.
• 882 to 910 mm: worktop's top above the floor: plinth, base unit and the worktop's thickness. Advice.
• 600 mm: worktop's depth from the wall, and a run's usual depth: deeper is said, with why. Advice.
• 650 mm: a laminate or solid wood worktop spans this across an appliance space or any gap with nothing under it (compact and stone less: kitfit says by how much). Enforced: breaking it is a conflict.
• 1250 mm: the same across two appliance spaces side by side, on a batten kitfit adds under its back edge. Enforced: breaking it is a conflict.
• 150 mm: plinth height. Advice.
• 53 to 198 mm: plinth heights kitfit's adjustable legs stand under: a taller plinth is made by kitfit's team. Enforced: kitfit builds it so.
• 50 mm: the plinth's face behind the fronts over it. Enforced: kitfit builds it so.
• 18 mm: front thickness: a unit's depth to its fronts is its carcass depth and this. Enforced: kitfit builds it so.
• 720 mm: base unit carcass height, on the plinth. Advice.
• 560 mm: base unit carcass depth from the wall. Advice.
• 720 mm: wall unit height. Advice.
• 300 mm: wall unit carcass depth from the wall. Advice.
• 450 to 500 mm: wall unit's underside above the worktop's top. Advice.
• 1410 mm: wall unit's underside above the floor, over the thickest worktop. Advice.
• 2130 mm: tall unit's top above the floor, in line with the wall units' tops. Advice.
• 1980 mm: tall unit carcass height, on the plinth. Advice.
• 560 mm: tall unit carcass depth from the wall, as a base unit's. Advice.
• 300, 400, 450, 500 and 600 mm: usual unit widths; kitfit makes any width to the mm. Advice.
• 650 mm: a single door on a unit wider than this is made a pair opening from the middle. Enforced: kitfit builds it so.
• 18 mm: a housing's side: a built-in or integrated appliance's housing is its maker's opening plus a side each side. Enforced: kitfit builds it so.
• 100 mm: a gap this wide or less, at a wall or between units, is closed with a filler; a wider one is left open, and said. Enforced: kitfit builds it so.
• 50 mm: the corner: no corner units yet, so each run stops short of the other: the run along one wall starts this far past the other run's fronts (a filler closes it), the corner behind left empty, the worktop across it, on a batten kitfit adds under its back edge in compact and stone. Advice.
• 50 mm: a hob's cut-out from the worktop's front edge (its maker's figure where kitfit knows the model). Enforced: breaking it is a conflict.
• 60 mm: a hob's cut-out from the wall behind. Enforced: breaking it is a conflict.
• 90 mm: a hob's cut-out (or a range cooker) from a side wall or tall unit. Enforced: breaking it is a conflict.
• 700 mm: nothing combustible (a wall unit, shelf, open shelf) directly over a hob closer than this. Enforced: breaking it is a conflict.
• 400 mm: a wall unit beside a hob, within its side clearance, at least this above it. Enforced: breaking it is a conflict.
• 650 mm: a cooker hood's underside above an electric or induction hob, at least. Enforced: breaking it is a conflict.
• 750 mm: a cooker hood's underside above a gas hob, at least. Enforced: breaking it is a conflict.
• 110 mm: a glass splashback from a gas hob's back edge, at least. Enforced: breaking it is a warning.
• 300 mm: clear worktop either side of a hob. Advice.
• 300 mm: clear worktop either side of a sink. Advice.
• 600 mm: a dishwasher beside the sink: no more than this between them. Advice.
• 300 mm: a socket or switch from a sink or its drainer, at least. Enforced: breaking it is a warning.
• 150 mm: a socket's centre above the worktop, at least. Enforced: breaking it is a warning.
• 30 mm: a machine may stand this far proud of the units beside it, for its hoses and plug. Enforced: breaking it is a conflict.
• 50 mm: room behind a washing machine or dryer whose maker gives no figure. Enforced: breaking it is a conflict.
• 20 mm: nothing beside an appliance more than this forward of its front, on its door's hinge side. Enforced: breaking it is a warning.
• 300 mm: a fridge or freezer from an oven, hob or range cooker, at least. Advice.
• 900 mm: clear floor in front of any unit or appliance, to stand at it and open its doors and drawers. Enforced: breaking it is a warning.
• 1000 to 1200 mm: a comfortable walkway between facing runs. Advice.
• 900 mm: clear floor straight out from a doorway. Enforced: breaking it is a warning.
• 1200 to 2700 mm: sink, hob and fridge: each leg of the triangle between them. Advice.
• 7900 mm: sink, hob and fridge: the three legs together, at most. Advice.

The wishlist

For each room, kitfit keeps the customer's wishlist: what they want in it, what lives elsewhere, and what they don't want, in their own words. Until each is answered, the customer's AI asks about what such a room usually has:

• A kitchen: hob, oven, microwave, cooker hood, sink, dishwasher, fridge, freezer, washing machine, tumble dryer, bins and recycling, larder, broom cupboard and boiler.
• A utility room: washing machine, tumble dryer, sink, fridge, freezer, bins and recycling, broom cupboard and boiler.

Nothing is refused for it: something the customer wants that the layout leaves out is a warning, and something in the layout they didn't ask for is pointed out.

What kitfit checks in every design

kitfit builds the customer's layout as given and never redesigns it. Every unit is built in full and checked, part by part, against the manufacturing rules and the room:

• Each part fits a whole board sheet, with its grain the right way; no two parts occupy the same space.
• Each drilled panel fits the fabricator's machines; no machining runs off a panel, overlaps other machining or cuts through; at least 4 mm of board is left between machining from opposite faces; the edging is at least as wide as the board is thick.
• No unit covers a door, window, doorway, extract fan or air vent, or stands in a door's swing.
• Pipes, sockets and other services are kept clear of by their own accuracy, or a cut-out is made for them.
• The wall behind each unit: where it departs from flat by more than 2 mm, the rear edges are cut straight and the unit is packed out plumb at fitting.
• The ceiling over each tall unit, filler and panel, and the headroom to stand each carcass up.
• Each appliance's space against its maker's figures: its width, height and depth, and the room behind it; a built-in one's against the openings its maker gives.
• Each hob and range cooker against its maker's figures, else kitfit's: its cut-out within the worktop and clear of the worktop's front edge, the wall behind and a side wall or tall unit; nothing combustible over it; the hood's height above it; the splashback behind it; sockets over it.
• Each socket and switch a splashback is cut for: at least 300 mm across from a sink or its drainer, and its centre at least 150 mm above the worktop, as IET guidance asks; a warning, as the electrician has the final say.
• Each unit's fronts and the gaps between them add up to its height.

Where the layout contradicts itself or the survey, that is a conflict: kitfit names both sides, with their values, and makes nothing of that unit until the customer settles it. Where a unit cannot be made, that is a refusal on mechanical grounds, with the numbers that rule it out. A unit that can be made with something the customer must know -- assembled upright, packed out at fitting -- is made, and that is said.

What is the customer's

• Their measurements, on a tape survey. kitfit builds to the customer's numbers. Their walls must meet up going round a closed room to within 20 mm; if they don't, kitfit asks for the room's diagonals, which must agree to within 20 mm. The customer checks kitfit's drawings of the survey and signs them off before a quote or an order.
• Telling kitfit what is on the walls: sockets, switches, pipes, radiators and boxing. kitfit keeps clear of what the survey shows, and of nothing else.
• Assembly: the customer assembles the kit themselves; no fitter is needed. They assemble the cabinets and fix them to the wall; hang the doors and fit the drawers, with their hinges, runners and handles; fit the plinths, panels, shelves, decks and fillers, cutting the fillers to width; fit the worktops and splashbacks kitfit supplies; fit the plug-in LED lighting kits: a driver with a plug, no wiring and no soldering; and they pack out where the wall is not flat, behind the wall fixings that come in the kit.
• Harder jobs: these are the customer's too, and they may want a fitter if their DIY skills aren't up to them: join the worktops (a joint is bolted and sealed from below and must sit flush and watertight); scribe units, panels and fillers to the wall or ceiling (the edge is marked from the wall and cut to follow it, for a close fit); hang the tall or wide wall units (they are heavy to lift and must hang level on fixings that suit the wall: a two-person job); fit the sink and tap (the sink is sealed into its cut-out, and the tap and waste connected watertight).
• Electrical work: kitfit recommends an electrician, always: a cooker circuit, or the connection to an existing one; a fused spur for a hard-wired appliance; new sockets in a splashback, on the existing ring or on a new circuit, which is notifiable building work in England that the electrician notifies; hard-wired lighting; hard-wired power to a unit; power for the cooker hood.
• Gas: a Gas Safe registered engineer must connect a gas hob or gas range cooker. The law requires it.
• Extraction: the customer's electrician or fitter, as electricians commonly do it: duct a cooker hood or vented dryer to outside, coring the wall where there is no duct yet.
• Plumbing: kitfit recommends a plumber where pipework is moved: bring water or waste to a unit the room's pipework doesn't reach. The plumbing parts to connect the sink and appliances are optional, supplied best effort.
• What they supply themselves: appliances, and any worktop, fitting or part kitfit does not supply. kitfit plans round them, with no fit guarantee.

Last updated 2026-10-21.