Is it worth replacing the developer's kitchen?

Usually after a few years rather than immediately. Builder-grade kitchens are specified to a handover price: thin carcasses, basic hinges, edge banding that lifts. The fronts often look fine while the carcass is what has failed. We will tell you honestly if yours has life left in it.

Rarely, and it is the constraint most owners want to challenge. The gas or power provision and the hood duct are fixed at handover, and moving them means work in the ceiling or the slab. We design the layout to accept those positions unless there is a compelling reason not to.

Plumber in Kiambu Road, Nairobi

We cover Kiambu Road including Thindigua, Two Rivers, Edenville, Fourways Junction, Membley, Ridgeways, Garden Estate, Thome. Off Kiambu Road and Northern Bypass. Gated schemes log contractor visits, so we ask for the estate management contact when the order is placed.

What is different about plumbing in Kiambu Road

Kiambu Road schemes at Thindigua and Edenville hand over with builder-grade kitchens that owners typically upgrade within a few years.
Fourways Junction townhouses put the kitchen on the ground floor with a utility behind, so the two are specified as one continuous joinery run.
Two Rivers area units hand over with hob and hood positions already fixed, which the carcass layout has to accept rather than move.

Kitchens on the Kiambu Road corridor

This corridor is Nairobi’s newest family housing, and nearly all of it was handed over with a kitchen already fitted. Our work here is almost entirely upgrade rather than first fit.

Builder-grade has a lifespan

Developer kitchens are specified to a handover price, and that shows in the places buyers do not look: thin carcass board, basic hinges, edge banding that lifts within a couple of years.

What confuses owners is that the doors often still look acceptable while the carcass behind them has given up. We open a few units and tell you which it is, because occasionally the answer is that new fronts and hardware on a sound carcass gets you most of the way for a fraction of the cost.

One continuous run

Fourways Junction and the similar townhouse schemes put the kitchen on the ground floor with a utility immediately behind it. Treated as two separate jobs they end up mismatched; specified as one continuous joinery run they work as a single space, and the utility absorbs the appliances and clutter that would otherwise sit in the kitchen.

Fixed services

Two Rivers area units arrive with hob position, hood duct and often the sink waste already fixed. Those are slab and ceiling decisions, made before the buyer existed.

We design to accept them. Moving a hood duct in a finished apartment means opening a ceiling, and it is very rarely worth what it costs, a layout planned around the fixed points almost always beats one that fights them.

What we are usually called out for in Kiambu Road

Fitted kitchens Kitchens templated against your actual walls and built in our own workshop, not flat-packed. Bedroom wardrobes Built-in wardrobes that use the full wall and the full height, with internals planned around what you actually own. Walk-in closets Dressing rooms configured around a real inventory, with ventilation and lighting designed in. TV and wall units Built-in media walls and storage with cable routes, ventilation and fixings designed for the wall you actually have.

Landmarks we work around here: Two Rivers Mall, Ridgeways Mall, Kiambu Road, Northern Bypass. See what fitted joinery costs.