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What kitchen renovation actually involves in a Cypriot home

What a Cypriot kitchen quote covers as standard, what is charged separately, and the strip-out and services work that decides what the job really costs.

7 min read

What Kitchen Renovation Actually Involves in Cyprus — illustrasjonsbilde

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ByStavros Loizou· Editor, kitchens, bathrooms and finishes

Stavros covers the rooms that carry the most cost per square metre and the finishes that go into them. He tracks the order trades have to arrive in, which moves a Cypriot renovation bill further than any hourly rate does.

Published

A kitchen in a Cypriot home gets replaced rather than adjusted, and the replacement is three jobs sold as one: a strip-out that usually takes the wall tiling and often the floor with it, a services stage moving water, waste and electrical circuits in walls that are concrete and block rather than hollow plasterboard, and only then a furniture installation. The furniture is the predictable part. Almost everything that moves the price happens in the days before it arrives, and what you are really comparing across three quotes is how much of that stage each fitter has agreed to own.

Scope in plain terms

A kitchen quote here is normally written as supply and fit: carcasses, doors, drawers, handles, worktop, and the labour to install them. That is a narrower thing than a kitchen renovation, and the gap is where most disputes live.

The standard supply-and-fit price covers strip-out of the existing units, supply and installation of the new carcasses, doors, drawers and handles, templating and fitting of the worktop, cutting in the sink and hob, and connecting appliances to services that are already present and already in the right position. Read that last clause twice. If the new sink sits on the opposite wall from the old one, the pipework to get it there is not in the price unless someone has written it in.

Three starting points are common in Cypriot housing, and they are not the same job:

  • A recent property with a serviceable layout. The kitchen lands roughly where the old one was and services stay put. This is what headline prices assume.
  • A flat in an older block. In the 1970s to 1990s blocks that make up so much of Strovolos and the Nicosia suburbs, the kitchen was built around one cold tap, a small fridge and no dishwasher. Cabinets are the least of it: rewiring and replumbing dominate renovation in that stock, and a kitchen is where both surface.
  • A property where the layout changes. Removing the wall to the living room or closing in a veranda is a building job with a kitchen on the end of it, and needs pricing and permitting as one.

Those ranges are read from recorded quotes at page load rather than typed into this text, so they do not go stale here. Our kitchen renovation pages break the figure down by district, and the project pages show where a kitchen sits against the other rooms if you are doing more than one.

What is included as standard

Strip-out and removal of the old kitchen. Units and worktop out, appliances disconnected. Ask whether taking the debris off site is included, because the answer differs between fitters.

Supply and installation of the furniture. Carcasses levelled and fixed, doors and drawers hung and adjusted, handles, plinths, cornice and end panels cut in. Levelling matters more here than the brochure suggests: tiled floors laid to a fall and block walls that are rarely plumb mean a good fitter spends real time scribing before anything looks straight.

Templating and fitting of the worktop. For stone and composite tops this is a separate visit after the carcasses are fixed, then fabrication off site, then a second visit to install.

Connecting appliances in position, where the services are already where they need to be, and sealing — the joint behind the worktop, around the sink and at the hob. In a room washed down daily and humid in August, that detail decides whether the carcass edges stay sound.

What is almost always extra

  • Moving the sink or the waste. Waste runs on a fall, so relocating it means lifting the floor or building the run up inside a bulkhead. In a flat, the position of the stack decides how far you can go at all.
  • New or extended electrical circuits. An induction hob, oven, dishwasher and washing machine are a different load from what an older kitchen was wired for. The work needs a registered electrician who can certify what they installed; ETEK maintains the register of technical professionals in Cyprus.
  • Chasing walls. You do not cut into columns, beams or slabs in concrete-frame construction. Routes run in the block infill, under the floor, or in a boxed duct that then needs finishing.
  • Wall tiling and splashback. Removing old tiling usually damages the render behind it, so re-tiling starts with patching. Stone and glass splashbacks are templated like worktops and priced like them.
  • Floor covering, a flooring job in its own right that rarely stops at the kitchen door if the room continues into a living area.
  • Appliances. Some prices include them, most do not. They arrive by sea, so a model out of stock is not a short wait, and a substitution can change a cabinet size.
  • Extraction. Ducting a hood through an external wall is a different proposition from a recirculating filter, and a concrete slab above you often decides the route for you.
  • Gas. There is no domestic gas grid here, so a gas hob runs on bottled LPG outside. Building in the cupboard, running the line and fitting the regulator is separate work.

The parts people underestimate

The gap without a worktop. Templating happens after the carcasses are fixed, fabrication happens off site, installation is a later visit. Between those dates you have cabinets and no worktop, sink or hob. Ask for the expected fabrication window before you accept the quote, not after the strip-out.

Services are the whole variable. When two quotes for the same room are far apart, the gap is nearly always plumbing and electrics rather than furniture. Read for the sink position, the waste run, the new circuits and who certifies them before you read the total.

Old blocks fight back. Opening a kitchen wall in the older stock tends to reveal work done to a different standard — a waste run at the wrong fall, cabling with no earth at the point, a stop tap that will not close. Agree in advance what happens if it turns up.

Heat, salt and the swing between seasons. Inland Nicosia takes the widest temperature range on the island, and a carcass on an uninsulated external wall moves with it, which is why doors that hung perfectly in February need adjusting in August. On the coast, the salt-laden air in Kato Paphos is why galvanised and marine-grade fixings are standard there — and why hinges, runners and handles deserve more thought than the door colour.

Access and season are real costs. On the hillside plots above Peyia, steep access roads limit vehicle size, so a worktop slab and a full load of carcasses may need splitting across smaller deliveries. In the free area of Famagusta, refurbishment concentrates between November and March because Ayia Napa and Protaras are letting rooms the rest of the year, and in that window good fitters are booked out rather than cheap. Our area pages record that constraint district by district.

The VAT rate can decide which quote is cheapest. Renovation and repair of a private residence in use for more than three years can be invoiced at the reduced VAT rate of 5% instead of the standard 19%, provided the value of the materials does not exceed 50% of the value of the services. A kitchen is material-heavy, so it sits closer to that threshold than a painting job, and two fitters can land on different answers depending on how they split supply from labour. Ask which rate each has applied and on what basis, and confirm the current conditions with the Tax Department.

Common questions

What should a kitchen quote actually list?

The furniture range and finish, the worktop material, which appliances are included, whether the price covers moving any water, waste or electrical point and who does that work, whether tiling and flooring are in or out, who removes the old kitchen, and the VAT rate applied. If it also says what happens when something unexpected is found behind the old units, you have a document you can hold other quotes against. Bringing your own plumber or electrician is fine, but then the sequencing is yours to own.

How long is a kitchen out of use?

Longer than the fitting days, because of the worktop sequence: strip-out and services, then carcasses, then templating, then off-site fabrication, then a separate installation visit. Ask for the fabrication window in writing — it is the part of the programme the fitter does not control.

Can I keep the old layout to save money?

Usually, and it is the single biggest saving available. Leaving the sink, waste and appliance positions where they are removes the plumbing and electrical stage almost entirely and turns the job into a furniture change.

Is a kitchen ever an urgent job?

Parts of one. A failed waste run, a leak into the cupboard below or a dead cooker circuit are same-week problems and belong to a plumber or electrician. Replacing the kitchen itself is planned work, and treating a leak as a reason to start it in a hurry is how people end up with the layout they did not want.

Kitchen renovation firms in Cyprus

8 companies covering this area.

Sources

  1. Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber (ETEK) — registered practitioners and technical practice — retrieved 2026-07-28
  2. Tax Department — VAT rates and reduced-rate conditions — retrieved 2026-07-28
  3. Cyprus Statistical Service — construction cost indices — retrieved 2026-07-28

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