Rural Stirling, Comprehensive Kitchen Replacements
Comprehensive Kitchen Replacements, Stirlingshire
Rural Stirling Housing Association
This project was part of Rural Stirling Housing Association’s modernisation programme and involved upgrading works to their tenanted properties all across the Stirlingshire region. Our remit here was to liaise with the association, tenants and the kitchen designers to establish a programme of kitchen replacements to over 100 properties in Kippen, Tyndrum, Gargunnock, Buchlyvie and Lochearnhead. The kitchens in these properties were to be replaced with modernised units and where necessary new boilers. We liaised with tenants to help them select their new kitchen from an approved list and then make a visit during the install and another directly on completion of the works to assess for correct install. After completion we produced a report on the completed works. This was fed back to Rural Stirling for their records and sign off.
Nearly all of the properties were different in some way, although houses could be the same in some situations, the way that tenants wanted the kitchen units, placement of appliances and finishes all varied so it was a lot of work to achieve a successful co-ordination of all the decisions and designs. Occasionally some tenants were left unhappy with the completed kitchen as it didn’t match their expectations, although they had chosen that design. Some tenants had installed their own kitchen finishes and these had been damaged in some places too. We were involved with this co-ordination of trying to achieve a satisfactory completion for all residents.
In just a few occasions the results didn’t match the expectancies of the tenants at all and Rural Stirling accepted to go for a total replacement of the completed works to avoid lengthy complications, however we were careful to bring forward the lessons learnt here so that subsequent works weren’t hampered by this potential waste of resource. Same for occasions where we had to advise on the repair to wall and floor finishes, as the kitchen installers become more adept at minimising any collateral damage we passed this knowledge on to minimise disruption.
The works were completed in November of 2016 and we began the same process for properties managed by Trust Housing Association between Greenock, Govan and Caldercruix.
