In many homes, the kitchen is the hub of the house. I’m not sure about your family, but at parties and gatherings I find everyone gravitates towards to kitchen and spend the evening in the kitchen drinking, eating and having a good time!
Just recently, however, we’ve decided to redecorate and felt the kitchen needed a bit of a face-lift. We’re not talking 1980’s wood cladding on the walls but it looks and feels outdated. Instead of having a whole new kitchen refitted at an extremely large cost, we decided to get look at simply changing the worktop to something fresh and more modern. On our ever-growing list of criteria, it also needed to be easy to maintain (read: mop up the red wine!) and quite easy to fit.
As with any project, I jumped onto the computer, closed down the pictures of cats in silly hats and went about looking for the ideal work surface for our kitchen and it wasn’t long until we stumbled upon uniqueworksurfaces.co.uk.
These guys offer a range of worktops suitable for bathrooms, kitchens, and garages and just about anywhere else! Solid surfaces such as those provided by these guys’ means they could be molded, shaped and manipulated to fit any style or trend.
We opted for the corian worktop, which Unique Work Surfaces supply but is an innovation from http://www.dupont.co.uk/products-and-services/construction-materials/surface-design-materials/brands/corian-solid-surfaces.html.
We did our research, due diligence and searched around for anything bad that has been said about them. Generally speaking, people will be more inclined to post negative opinions than positive opinions on the Internet.
It was a breeze! But then I realized that not everyone has dealt with trades or something on this scale before and are often daunted by cowboy builders and rogue traders. Because of that, I wanted to put something together that hopefully helps you in finding the right company and what to look for.
So here goes!
- View samples of work
This one is a simple, but often over looked, tip. More disposable and low-cost items such as clothing can be bought online with the safety that you can return them or sell them on if you don’t like them. But would you buy a £20,000 car without actually taking a look around a showroom model?
Ask questions about past projects. Any tradesman worth their salt would be more than happy to brag about the work they’ve done and talk you through what they did.
Listen to what they say and make sure you’re happy with the quality of the work they’ve provided.
- Ask questions
Asking questions is a sensible approach to any large purchase. You need to be comfortable and asking any type of question can either lead to more questions or squash any concerns you have.
Whether about timescale, costs, quality or even if it’s about what time do they work till can all help to determine just which company suits your needs the most.
- Ask for guarantees
This one is a little tricky a guarantees can range drastically in what they provide but they can offer much-needed peace of mind that any errors or problems will not incur additional costs. Talk to your list of companies and ask about what they can guarantee, what’s included and note this down. Them run comparisons and see which company offers a guarantee that suits your needs.
Pro tip: Get this in writing on headed paper at the very least!
Brucey bonus question tip
This one is a nice little tip that I actually thought of post-article-creation. Find out how long they’ve been trading for and if possible then use a website such as duedil.com. Why? A long established company might not offer the very highest quality; just the same as a new company might not offer the worst quality but finding out how long they’ve been trading can assist in any decision making.
By using a company check website, you can make sure that nothing adverse is going on with the company that will put your project in jeopardy.
Good luck! It’s not as daunting as you might think, but just be careful, ask questions and make sure you’re comfortable with the company you’ve chosen.
Jason is the online marketing guy over at prototypeseo.co.uk. When he’s not ranking website, driving traffic and making businesses money, he uses his blogging brain to create content about the problems he encounters on a daily basis. The above is just a few of the many tips and ideas Jason writes about
