There’s no doubt that many people are installing new kitchens on their own. For those who know what they are doing, this is fine. For others, the small savings they made are not worth the stress and mistakes that followed. My wife and I gave our kitchen a totally new look recently, and by taking a middle path between DIY kitchen cabinet intsalls and paying a professional, we saved some money and got a good job done quickly.

Here’s what we did.

First, we called in a builder friend and arranged for me to help him do the work. This is the “middle path”: a professional was involved but a DIY amateur (me!) was also involved, and taking on some of the hours of unskilled work.

Our friend sent us to look at kitchen cabinet designs and ring around the manufacturers.

We quickly decided we would not used metal kitchen cabinets. They just would not go with the rest of our home.

In the same way, we also ruled out unfinished kitchen cabinets. Our friend pointed out that it would draw out the time involved in installing the new kitchen. And the savings were not significant when put against this factor. So we went for already painted cabinets ready to assembled and install with the kitchen cabinet organizers planned for and ordered.

Next we got down to work. We ripped out the old kitchen in a day, and then I began assembling the new cabinets. That didn’t take long. My friend helped me install them in the now-empty room, and then we both got to the hardest part – fitting the L-shaped new bench top. I was glad we had a professional at this point. Getting the levels true took some expertise. But eventually it was complete, and we just had to wait for the plumber.

He did his work and we moved back in even before the tilter came to put a short run of new tiles along one wall of the kitchen to make up for a difference in the heights of the old bench top and the new modern one.

Over all the work of install new kitchen cabinets was not difficult, with the help of our friend. And although the price did creep up a little as new things had to be added to the original work specifications as we went along, my wife and I are very happy with the outcome.