The kitchen at the back of a terrace
A late-Victorian terrace of the kind built across Littlehampton after the branch line arrived in 1863 was planned with the kitchen at the back, in a narrow addition behind the main house, often with a scullery behind that and a strip of yard alongside. It is a long, dark, awkward room, and it is the room most terrace owners want to change.
There are two ways to do it. Within the existing walls, the kitchen is replanned as a galley with the best possible storage and light, and the wall between it and the back reception room comes out to make a kitchen-diner. Or the side return is built over, the old side wall of the addition replaced with a steel, and the kitchen widens into the new space under rooflights. The first is a kitchen refit with a structural opening. The second is an extension with a kitchen in it. We price both so you can compare.
Flats: compact, and somebody else's ceiling
A fifth of Littlehampton homes are purpose-built flats, and nearly 8 per cent more are flats inside converted houses, many of them along the seafront and the streets behind it. A kitchen in a flat is a compact job with a lease attached. Moving the sink or the washing machine usually means a new connection to a shared soil stack, the extract has to vent outside without crossing walls you do not own, and the floor is the ceiling of the flat below. We read the lease, agree the work with the managing agent, lay a proper waterproof and acoustic layer under the floor finish, and keep to agreed working hours.
Hard water
Littlehampton is supplied by Southern Water and the water is hard. Southern Water's postcode checker gives the official figure for your street; local water-softener suppliers quote somewhere around 240 to 280 parts per million, which is hard. Either way, a new kitchen should be specified for scale. Replaceable ceramic tap cartridges, a boiling-water tap whose filter you can change, isolation valves you can reach, and, if you fit a softener, a separate cold tap for drinking water, planned before the worktop is templated.
New-builds: the first proper kitchen
To the north of the town, the estates at Courtwick Park and North Littlehampton have added a large number of new homes in the last fifteen years. Their kitchens were chosen by a developer for a sales brochure. Replacing one after five or ten years is usually straightforward, because the services are modern and the walls are square, and it is a chance to fix the layout: an island where there was a peninsula, a larder unit where there was a gap, and decent lighting.
Character in the conservation areas
Inside a house, a kitchen is not a planning matter even in a conservation area, though in a listed building, internal changes that affect its character need listed building consent. What is, in Littlehampton's seafront, East Street and River Road conservation areas, is anything that changes the outside: a new window over the sink, an extract grille on a street elevation, or a new door to the garden on a listed building. The 36 listed buildings in the seafront area alone mean that question comes up. We route extracts and services to the back of the building wherever we can.
Getting the kitchen to the house
Terraced streets in the older parts of town are narrow and fully parked. Littlehampton has no controlled parking zone, so there is no permit to buy for our van, but a skip on the road needs a county council licence at £81 for fourteen days. Worktops up to three metres long have to come through a front door and a hallway, so we template, cut and sometimes joint them to suit the route in.
What it costs
The bands on our price guide include VAT. A like-for-like refit runs from £6,000 to £22,800. A full refit with new services and flooring is £13,200 to £36,000. A refit with a knock-through, typical of a terrace, is £22,800 to £50,400. We supply kitchens or fit one you have bought, with the labour priced the same, and Littlehampton is quoted on the same rates as Bognor Regis.
The trade is under kitchen fitting; next door is kitchens in Rustington, and up the river kitchens in Arundel. A kitchen in a new side-return is under house extensions in Littlehampton. The town is on builders in Littlehampton.
Send us the supplier's plan or a photograph of the room, and tell us if it is a flat. The quotation will separate the units, the building work and the structure. Ring 07470 078236. Two-year workmanship guarantee and £2m public liability.