Kitchen renovation on the Cote d'Azur

In the UK or US you might buy units from a big-box retailer and hire a joiner to fit them, or go through a single kitchen company that designs, supplies and fits everything. France has a similar split, but the specialist route is more the norm. A cuisiniste is a kitchen showroom that does design, supply and fitting as one package, usually with its own installers instead of subcontracted ones. You can still buy units elsewhere, including bringing a kitchen from abroad, and pay a local artisan or the cuisiniste's fitting arm to install it. Both routes are common on the coast.

Whichever route you choose, the devis is what protects you. A cuisiniste's design consultation is often free, but the moment you approve a layout, get the devis in writing with every line priced separately: units, worktop, appliances, delivery, fitting labour, and any plumbing or electrical work the fitter can't do themselves. A verbal "around 8,000 euros" from a showroom means nothing once the invoice arrives.

The other difference is who touches what. A cuisiniste's own fitters install the units and worktop, but moving a sink, a hob or a socket usually needs a plumber or electrician on the same job. If the showroom doesn't have these trades in-house, ask who is coordinating the handover between them, because a kitchen fitted before the plumber has moved the sink outlet is a kitchen fitted twice.

As the renovation hub explains, on a home over two years old the labour and most of the building work sit at 10%; the appliances and freestanding furniture stay at 20%. For a kitchen, that means the fitting labour, the units built into the layout and the worktop are 10% work, while the oven, hob, dishwasher, fridge and any freestanding piece (a table, an island on castors instead of fixed) are 20%. This is exactly why a good kitchen devis needs two separate TVA lines. See the full TVA guide for the reasoning behind the split.

The dwelling must be more than two years old, and you certify that on the devis or invoice itself. If your cuisiniste applies 10% to the whole invoice including the appliances, ask them to correct it before you sign. You sign a certification on the devis that the building is over two years old; if that sentence is wrong, the tax office can come to you for the difference.

A kitchen usually touches three or four trades: the cuisiniste's fitters, a plumber, an electrician, and sometimes a tiler or a plasterer if walls are being opened up. When you buy the whole package from a cuisiniste, their project manager typically sequences the trades for you, even where some are subcontracted. When you're assembling the job yourself, from a kitchen bought abroad or fitted by an independent artisan, that sequencing becomes your job or the job of whoever you hire to do it.

The order matters. Plumbing and electrical first-fix work (moving pipes and cables inside the walls) has to happen before the units go in, not after. If you're not on-site for the whole job, a maître d'oeuvre or a cuisiniste with in-house project management earns their fee here, because a missed sequencing step means pulling a finished kitchen apart to fix it.