Kitchen Renovation Cost Calculator for the UAE

A kitchen is a row of boxes with doors on. What you are buying is the length of that row, not the size of the room it sits in.

So a quote is built from the run: so many metres of base units, so many of wall units, so many of worktop.

This is why a large open plan kitchen with a modest run of units can cost less than a small galley kitchen packed with cabinets on both walls.

It also means the first thing to do before getting quotes is to measure the run you actually want. Walk the layout and add up the lengths.

Tall units, larders and island units are usually priced separately again, because they are more material and more work than a standard base unit.

Same room, same run of units, very different prices. These are the reasons.

A kitchen renovation is not only joinery, and the parts that are not joinery are the ones that cause delay.

Plumbing has to be where the sink and the appliances are going. Moving a sink means moving a waste, and waste pipes need fall.

Electrics have to be right before the units go in. Sockets in the wrong place behind a fixed cabinet are permanent.

Extract matters more here than people think. A kitchen that is open to a living space with no proper extract fills the whole apartment with cooking smells, and a recirculating hood is not the same thing as ducting outside.

And appliance points need planning. A dishwasher and a washing machine each need water, waste and power, and each needs an isolation valve that can be reached.

This is why changing the layout costs so much more than replacing like for like. The moment the sink moves, three trades are involved.

The sequence explains where the weeks go.

Strip out the old kitchen. Then first fix plumbing and electrical, with everything positioned for the new layout.

Then the walls and floor get finished, at least where units will sit against them.

Then the units go in and are levelled. Nothing before this can be exact, because the units set the height and the line for everything else.

Then the worktop is templated. For quartz or stone this is a physical template taken after the units are fitted, and then the top is cut off site, which takes days.

Then the worktop is fitted, then the sink and hob, then second fix plumbing and electrical, then the splashback, then the doors adjusted.

The worktop templating step is the one that surprises people, because it means a gap of several days with units in and no top on them.

Kitchen quotes are among the hardest to compare, because two suppliers rarely describe the same thing the same way.

Ask each one for the run in metres, the carcass material, the door material and finish, the hardware brand, and what internal fittings are included.

Ask whether the worktop is included and in what material, and whether templating and fitting are in the price.

Ask what is excluded. Appliances, plumbing, electrical, tiling and flooring are often outside a kitchen quote, and that is where a low number usually comes from.

Then put each quote into this tool line by line. Once they are in the same structure, the difference is visible.

And keep the contingency for the layout change, not for an upgrade. If the sink moves, something behind the wall will not be where anybody expected.