Quick answer
Social housing kitchens run a three-tier ladder: a hardware-and-faces retrofit where carcasses are sound and dry, a partial renewal replacing the wet run and benchtop, and a full coded renewal, commonly $10,000-$19,000 including GST per kitchen. The gate between tiers is carcass condition, not age. Retrofitting a swollen, wet carcass buys about two years and pays twice.
Key points
- Three tiers: retrofit (hinges, runners, doors, edges), partial renewal (wet run plus benchtop), full renewal (the complete coded package).
- The gate between tiers is moisture and carcass condition at the wet run, checked with the kickboard off, whatever the spreadsheet says about age.
- Tenant disruption climbs the ladder: commonly under a day in the house for a retrofit, one to two days for a partial, two to four for a full renewal.
- A retrofit costs a small fraction of the $10-19k a full coded renewal commonly runs, which is exactly why it gets used one tier too far.
- Retrofitting a wet carcass is the false economy: the new doors hang on swelling board and the full renewal arrives two years later anyway, on top of the retrofit spend.
Somewhere in the maintenance queue is an address that keeps coming back. Hinges two winters ago, hinges again last year, and now the same one-line order a third time: same kitchen, same doors. This time the tech's notes go past the work order: sink base bottom swollen and dark at the back corner, screws holding on reputation. Three twenty-minute visits have gone into a carcass that was failing underneath them all, and the third callback finally asks the question your whole kitchen line lives on: is this a repair address, a wet-run address, or a renewal address, and who decides on what evidence?
Portfolio owners face this at scale. A few hundred kitchens, fitted across different decades, budget pressure in both directions: renew too early and you have binned serviceable joinery across fifty addresses, retrofit too late and you are paying twice inside three years. The way through is a ladder with hard gates, the one we price and build against for housing providers, so that any assessor standing in any kitchen reaches the same tier for the same evidence.
The three tiers, and what each includes
| Tier | Scope | Carcass gate | In-house disruption |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Retrofit | Hinges, runners, doors, edge repairs, catches, inserts | Sound and dry, all runs | Commonly under a day |
| 2. Partial renewal | Wet run cabinets, stainless bench, benchtop; dry carcasses stay | Dry side sound, wet side gone | Commonly 1-2 days |
| 3. Full renewal | Complete coded kitchen package, all new | Any condition | Commonly 2-4 days |
No address has to climb the ladder rung by rung: a kitchen lands directly on the tier its condition evidence supports. Gathering that evidence takes ten minutes: kickboard off, torch along the carcass bottoms, hand on the sink base floor, note the hinge and runner state, two photos per finding, wide and detail.
Tier one: hardware and faces
Tier one exists because joinery callbacks across a portfolio are dominated by two things: hinge and runner adjustment, and edge lifts. None of that is carcass failure. NZ cabinet doors hang on 35 mm cup, clip-on European-pattern hinges, so replacement hinges drop onto existing plates and stripped screw holes take a hardwood plug with PVA and a redrilled pilot. Runners swap to soft-close side or undermount patterns on the same drawers. Lifted melamine edges re-stick with contact adhesive or re-edge from 21, 36 or 45 mm iron-on rolls. Doors that are past saving replace individually: width by height, hinge cup positions, overlay, new fronts drilled to match, in the closest current decor or across the whole visible run where the original is discontinued.
A tier-one visit also carries the tenancy-grade extras that inspections flag: childproof catches, cutlery inserts, a benchtop edge sealed before it swells rather than after. The gate is absolute, though. Every run dry, every carcass sound. The moment the torch finds swelling at the wet run, tier one is off the table for that address.
Tier two: partial renewal, the wet run and the top
Water damage in a tenanted kitchen concentrates where the water is: the sink base, its floor, and the benchtop around the bowl. Tier two accepts that and replaces exactly that. The wet-run cabinetry comes out, a new sink base goes in with a 304 stainless bench at the sink run, the benchtop renews, and the dry-side carcasses, which have spent their lives holding tea towels and pots, stay as they are. Refacing the dry-run doors and hardware in the same visit can be priced as an option on top of tier two, worth taking where decors have drifted, but the tier itself stays wet run plus top.
Tier two lives or dies on the honesty of the dry-side check, and on fixing the floor first: what sits under a failed sink base is covered properly in repairing water damage at the sink base and floor, and no partial renewal should be signed off over an unrepaired substrate. Done right, it is the best value tier on the ladder for mid-life stock: the disruptive plumbing day happens once, the expensive wet components renew, and the address drops back into planned maintenance.
The three-tier ladder with its condition gates and typical in-house days.
Tier three: the full coded renewal
Tier three is the package most providers already know: white high-pressure-laminate or gloss fronts with 2 mm PVC edging, 304 stainless bench at the sink run, laminate top on the dry runs, glass splashback behind the cooker, childproof catches and cutlery inserts, appliances by others. Priced the way the sector prices it, as coded lines rather than lump sums: the shape of it runs CJC240 for the wet underbench unit per number, CJC250 dry underbench per metre, CJC260 overheads per metre, CJC270 tall units per number, CJC725 kicks per metre, CBT140 laminate top per metre, CBT330 stainless bench per number, CMS480 splashback per number, with CJD800 inserts and CHC400 catches closing it out. Illustrative codes; the issued schedule governs, and pricing kitchens to the Kāinga Ora Schedule of Rates covers how the coding and pricing areas work in anger.
Commonly that package lands around $10,000-$19,000 including GST per kitchen depending on run length and count, with volume discounts stepping in from a handful of kitchens and deepening past twenty. Against that, a tier-one visit is a small fraction of one kitchen's renewal money, which is the whole reason the ladder exists: across a few hundred addresses, every kitchen correctly held at tier one funds renewals somewhere they are genuinely due.
How do you decide which tier a kitchen gets?
Four inputs, weighed in this order. First, carcass condition and moisture, the hard gate already described; it overrides everything else. Second, remaining life of the asset: a house scheduled for major redevelopment within a few years should not receive a tier-three kitchen, and a house being held for decades should not limp on serial tier-one visits past their value. Third, tenant disruption: a retrofit happens around a household in under a day, a partial takes the sink away for a night, a full renewal is commonly two to four days of managed disruption, and the tolerance for that varies by household and by how well it is run; replacing kitchens in occupied social housing is the working method. Fourth, cost per tier against the renewal budget, which mostly decides how many of each tier happen this year rather than which tier an address needs.
Notice what is not on the list: age. Age predicts nothing a torch cannot confirm better. A 1990s kitchen kept dry outlives a 2015 kitchen with a slow waste leak, and a programme gated on age renews the wrong addresses in both directions.
The false economy: retrofitting a wet carcass
The tempting version goes like this: the sink base is swollen but holding, budget is tight, so hang new doors, fit new hinges, re-edge the fronts and move on. Eighteen months later the screws let go of board that kept swelling behind the new faces, the benchtop edge has gone with it, and the address comes back through as an urgent renewal, in winter, with a tenant who has now had two rounds of trades in two years. The retrofit money is gone, the renewal costs what it always did, and the household paid the disruption twice. Buying two years this way is the most expensive purchase on the maintenance line.
A retrofit on a wet carcass is not a saving. It is a renewal with a deposit paid in doors.
Running the ladder as a programme
Once tiers are gated properly, the volume mechanics take over. Group tier-three addresses into production runs of one kitchen type, hardware kitted per kitchen, first unit signed off before the run rates. Sequence measure days in walk order with one variance log across the addresses. Pair every claimed line with dated wide-and-detail photos per address. Close each renewal with a proper handover: care guide, warranty terms, decor codes and hardware models per address, so the next assessor is not guessing what was fitted; handover packs for housing providers sets out the contents. And feed the tier decisions back into the budget model, because the split between planned tiers and reactive callouts is the number that tells you whether the ladder is working; the economics of planned versus reactive kitchen maintenance makes that case with the arithmetic.
A defensible default
If you need a position to put in front of an asset committee, this one holds. Gate every kitchen on moisture at the wet run, kickboard off, before any tier is assigned. Dry and sound everywhere: tier one now, renewal held to the asset plan. Wet at the sink run, dry elsewhere: tier two, floor repaired first. Water beyond the wet run, or boxes failing structurally: tier three, batched into the next production run. Never tier one over a wet carcass, whatever the budget month looks like. The survey that powers it needs five fields per address: carcass condition per run, moisture at the sink base, hinge and runner state, benchtop and decor codes, photos wide and detail. We price all three tiers from exactly that evidence pack, itemised against your schedule where one exists, quoted within 24 hours with a reference number, from the East Tāmaki workshop that builds the packages.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a kitchen retrofit and a renewal?
A retrofit keeps the carcasses and replaces the moving and visible parts: hinges, runners, doors, edge repairs, catches and inserts. Renewal replaces the kitchen itself, either partially, meaning the wet run and benchtop while dry carcasses stay, or fully as a complete coded package. The retrofit is a maintenance action; the renewal is a capital one, and the gate between them is carcass condition.
When should a social housing kitchen be replaced rather than repaired?
When the carcasses fail the condition gate: swelling, tide marks or softness at the carcass bottoms, screws that no longer hold, boxes out of square. If that damage is confined to the sink run, a partial renewal replacing the wet run and benchtop is usually defensible. Where it has travelled, or the boxes are failing generally, full renewal costs less than serial patching within a few years.
How much does a full social housing kitchen renewal cost?
Commonly around $10,000-$19,000 including GST per kitchen for the standard coded package, depending on run length and kitchen count, with volume discounts stepping in from a handful of kitchens and deepening past twenty. Retrofit visits cost a small fraction of that, which is why gating tiers correctly across a portfolio funds the renewals that are genuinely due.
How disruptive is each tier for the tenant?
Commonly: under a day in the house for a tier-one retrofit, with the kitchen usable throughout; one to two days for a partial renewal, with the sink out of action for part of it; two to four for a full renewal, managed with temporary bench space and clear notice. Disruption planning belongs inside the tier decision itself.
Can you retrofit doors onto a kitchen with a swollen sink base?
You can, and you should not. New doors hang on board that keeps swelling behind them, the screws let go within a couple of years, and the address returns as an urgent renewal with the retrofit money already spent. A wet carcass caps the value of everything attached to it. Repair the moisture damage and renew the wet run first; then faces and hardware are worth fitting.
What should a kitchen condition survey record?
Five fields per address: carcass condition per run with the kickboard off, moisture at the sink base and floor, hinge and runner state, benchtop type plus decor codes, and dated photos, one wide shot and one detail per finding. That evidence pack lets any assessor assign the same tier for the same kitchen, and it is enough for a supplier to price all three tiers without a second visit.
Does kitchen age decide the renewal programme?
No, and programmes gated on age renew the wrong addresses in both directions. A kitchen kept dry for thirty years can pass every condition gate while a ten-year-old kitchen with a slow leak fails them all. Age belongs in the asset plan as context; the tier decision belongs to condition evidence gathered at the kickboard line with a torch.