On site · Worth care
When do you lock your finishes and fittings?
Choose kitchens, tiles, sanitaryware and flooring well before the builder needs them.
- When it lands
- Usually six to eight weeks before first fix.
- What it costs to get wrong
- Late choices stop trades. A delayed decision on a kitchen can hold up three other trades and push the finish by weeks.
The finishes feel like the fun part, and they are — but they are also a programme item. Late choices stop sites, and long-lead products stop them for weeks.
Front-load the long leads
Bespoke joinery, staircases, structural glazing, specialist tiles, some sanitaryware and anything imported can carry lead times of eight to sixteen weeks. Those decisions belong at the start of the build, not the middle.
A bespoke oak staircase was chosen in week nine of a sixteen-week programme. Fabrication took eleven weeks. The build finished four weeks late with the site effectively idle at the end — paying preliminaries for waiting.
Choose against the allowance, not the mood board
Every selection should be checked against the allowance in the contract. A £14,000 kitchen against a £9,000 allowance is a £5,000 variation, whatever it feels like when you are standing in the showroom.
Keeping a simple schedule of allowance versus actual, item by item, means you find out in the showroom rather than in the final account.
Confirm in writing, with codes
Product name, manufacturer code, finish, size, quantity, supplier, lead time and who is ordering it. Verbal specification is how the wrong grout colour, the wrong handing and the wrong tap finish arrive on site.
Why this one matters
Lead times, not preferences, drive this decision. Once you know the dates the builder needs items on site, working backwards makes the choice urgent rather than open-ended.
Do this week
- List every long-lead item and its lead time.
- Write the allowance next to each selection.
- Confirm every chosen item in writing with its product code.
The realistic choices
Decide everything up front
Best for programme and price certainty.
Use allowances
Set a realistic figure per item and confirm the actual cost before ordering.
What good looks like
- A dated schedule of what must be chosen by when
- Actual prices replacing allowances as each item is confirmed
Questions worth asking
- When is the latest we can decide this without delaying you?
- What is the allowance we agreed?
From real projects
Eleven weeks for a staircase
A bespoke oak staircase was chosen in week nine of a sixteen-week programme. Fabrication took eleven weeks. The build finished four weeks late with the site effectively idle at the end, and the builder claimed for prolongation.
The lesson: Late client decisions are the most common cause of delay — and the one you fully control.
Putting it into practice
What this decision should leave behind
The steps to work through, the paperwork worth keeping and the questions to send your builder today.
- · Front-load the long-lead choices
- · Decide against the allowance, not the mood board
- · Confirm every choice in writing with a code
- · Template: Specification and decision deadline schedule
- · Paperwork: Specification schedule with product codes
- · Paperwork: Order confirmations and lead times
Next decision
Should you pay this request?