Kitchen Snagging in Bath: What to Check Before the Final Payment

The last day of a kitchen fit is the worst possible moment to start looking closely at it. The fitter is packing tools into the van, the room finally looks like the drawing, and there is a natural urge to say it all looks great and settle up. It is also the only point in the whole project where you still hold something the fitter wants. On the Bath jobs we handle, a finished kitchen of 12 to 18 units typically leaves three to six small items on the list at handover, almost all of them adjustments rather than faults, and they take one return visit of about an hour to clear. The households who never write them down are the ones still living with a door that catches two years later. Snagging is not about being difficult. It is a normal stage of the work, and any decent Bath fitter has already allowed for it.

What Handover Should Look Like When a Bath Kitchen Is Finished

Handover is a scheduled appointment, not a wave from the doorstep. You should be walked round the room by the person who actually did the work, shown how the appliances are operated and isolated, told where the stopcock and the isolating valves are, and given the paperwork in one go. On a full kitchen installation in Bath that conversation usually takes half an hour, and it is worth blocking the time out properly rather than squeezing it into a school run.

Do the walkthrough in daylight if you possibly can. Downlighters flatten everything and hide the exact things you are trying to spot: shadow gaps that vary along a run, a door that catches the light differently from its neighbour, dust caught in a sealant line. Take a torch as well, because the inside of a corner cabinet is a place snags love to hide.

Doors, Drawers and the Ten Minute Test

Open every door and every drawer, then close them all again. It sounds obvious and hardly anyone does it. What you are looking for is consistency rather than perfection: the gaps between doors should be even top to bottom and match each other along the run, and the doors should sit in the same plane so the reflections line up.

Drawers should run out to their full extension without dropping at the end, and the soft-close should catch and pull in from about 50mm rather than slamming or stalling short. Load the deep pan drawers before you sign anything - a runner that feels fine empty can sag under 15kg of casserole dishes, and that is far easier to raise now than in three months.

Then check the things attached to the doors rather than the doors themselves. Handles should be at the same height across the run and tight to the touch. Corner cabinets need a hinge that lets the door clear the adjacent handle. Bin pull-outs should not foul the plinth. None of these are big jobs, but all of them are a nuisance once the fitter has moved on to the next street.

Worktops, Joints and Sealant Lines

Worktops carry the most expensive snags, so give them the most attention. Run a fingernail across any joint: you should feel a line, not a step. On laminate the mitre should be tight along its whole length with no swelling at the front edge, which is the first sign that water has already got in somewhere.

Around the sink and hob cutouts, look for a clean sealed edge rather than a smear of silicone doing the job of a proper seal. The upstand or splashback should meet the worktop in a single consistent bead, and where the worktop meets the wall behind, the sealant should be even in width. A bead that swells and thins along its length is the classic sign of a rushed final hour.

Stone and composite deserve one extra check. Look along the surface at eye level towards a window - polishing marks and swirls show up in raking light that are invisible from above. And check the overhang is equal along the front, because an unequal overhang on an island is one of those things you cannot unsee once you have noticed it.

Why Bath Walls Make Some Snags Look Worse Than They Are

Plenty of what gets raised as a snag in Bath is actually the building, not the workmanship. Very few kitchens here sit in a square room. Rubble stone walls in Twerton and Weston, lath and plaster in the Bear Flat terraces, ashlar in the town houses - none of it is flat, and floors in older Bath properties routinely fall 20 to 30mm across the width of a kitchen.

That means the honest test is not whether the gap behind the worktop is zero, but whether it has been dealt with properly. A scribed worktop follows the wall in a clean curve. A packed-out one leaves a wedge and fills it with sealant. Both can be acceptable, but you should be told which you have got and why. Similarly, cabinets that are level and plumb in a house where the floor is not will show a tapering plinth line - that is correct work, and forcing the units to follow the floor instead would put every door out.

Where it stops being acceptable is when the compromise has been hidden rather than explained. If a gap has been filled with a strip of trim that does not match, or a plinth has been cut short and covered by a mat, that goes on the list.

The Paperwork That Should Change Hands

A kitchen is one of the few jobs in the house that touches gas, water and electricity in the same fortnight, and each of those leaves a paper trail. Ask for it all at handover rather than chasing it later.

For electrics, new circuits and consumer unit work are notifiable, and the installer must either be registered under a competent person scheme or have the work signed off by building control. Electrical Safety First’s explanation of what Part P covers and who can certify it is the clearest summary if you want to know which side of the line your job falls on. For gas, a hob connection must be done by an engineer on the Gas Safe Register and you should get the record sheet.

Then there is everything else: appliance manuals and serial numbers, the manufacturer’s cabinet guarantee, the worktop care instructions, and the fitter’s own workmanship warranty in writing with a start date on it. If the firm is registered with a scheme such as TrustMark, the government-endorsed quality scheme for tradespeople, ask how their dispute route works while everyone is still on good terms.

Writing a Snag List a Fitter Can Actually Act On

A list that says “doors not right” gets you nowhere. A list that says “base unit door left of the oven sits 3mm proud at the top, photo attached” gets fixed on the next visit. Number the items, describe the location the way the fitter describes it, and attach photographs taken in daylight.

Split the list into two columns before you send it: things to fix, and things to explain. Some of what looks wrong will have a reason behind it, and separating the two saves an argument. It also shows you are being reasonable, which changes the tone of the reply you get.

Send it by email, not text, and ask for a date rather than a promise. One return visit that clears twelve items is far more likely to happen than twelve separate favours. Agree a realistic window too - two weeks is normal, and expecting someone back the next morning when they are mid-way through another install is not.

Holding Back the Final Payment Without Falling Out

Money is the awkward part, and the reason it gets awkward is that most people have not agreed the rules in advance. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 provisions covering services, work has to be carried out with reasonable care and skill, and if it is not, you are entitled to a repeat performance or a price reduction. That is a fair standard, not a licence to withhold everything over a chipped plinth.

The practical version is a retention: agree at contract stage that a small percentage of the total, commonly 5 to 10 per cent, is held until the snag list is signed off. Put it in the same email chain as everything else. This works best when it has been discussed from the start, which is one of the reasons the structure of the payment schedule matters so much - our guide to kitchen fitter deposits and stage payments in Bath covers how to set that up before the first unit arrives.

If a fitter refuses any inspection period at all and wants the full balance the moment the last screw goes in, treat that as information. Firms that stand behind their work expect to come back once. It is the ones who never intend to return who need paying in full on the day.

None of this is complicated. Book the walkthrough properly, write down what you find, and settle the money rules at the start rather than the end. Do that and the last day of a kitchen fit is a half hour with a torch and a coffee rather than a standoff in the hallway.

Talk to us about your Bath kitchen and we will walk you through exactly how our handover and guarantee works before you commit to anything.