Words you'll meet in a showroom

Carcass

The carcass is the structural box of a kitchen cabinet, made from board and holding the shelves, doors and fixings together. It sits behind the doors and worktop, so you rarely see it once the kitchen is finished, but its board type and construction decide how well the cabinet copes with weight and damp over the years. A base cabinet under a sink carries the extra risk of a slow leak going unnoticed, so the carcass board around that unit matters more than it does in a run of dry storage cupboards.

Plinth

The plinth is the panel that runs along the floor, covering the legs the cabinets stand on and closing the gap underneath. Some plinths are made to lift off, which is where a kickspace heater or a hidden socket for a slide-out bin can be fitted.

Service void

The service void is the gap left between the back of the cabinet and the wall, and it's where the pipework and cabling for the kitchen actually run. Getting its depth right before the units go in avoids drilling or chasing walls afterwards. A new socket behind an oven housing or a relocated water feed to the sink both depend on the service void being planned before first fix starts. Read /gas-electrics-building-control.html for how this stage fits with the rest of the electrical and plumbing work.

Overlay

Overlay describes how far a door extends over the front face of the carcass, and it decides how wide the gap looks between one door and the next when the kitchen is closed up. A full overlay door covers the carcass edge almost completely, giving a tight, continuous run of doors with barely a line showing between units.

Cam and dowel

Cam and dowel is the knock-down fitting used to build a flat-pack carcass without glue: a dowel locates the panel, and a cam lock is turned with a screwdriver to pull the joint tight. A cabinet that has come loose at a corner joint over time is usually a cam lock that has worked its way back and just needs retightening.

Postformed edge

A postformed edge is a worktop finish where the laminate is heat-wrapped over a rounded profile at the front. It's the rolled-front look you see on most laminate worktops in mass-market kitchens, and it's harder to damage at the edge than a square profile with a glued-on strip.

Templating

Templating is the visit made by the stone worktop fabricator once the carcasses are installed and levelled, to take an exact measurement of the finished opening before the stone is cut. Because the stone is cut to the actual carcasses, templating has to happen after the units are in and adds a step to the installation programme before the worktop can be fitted.

First fix

First fix is the stage of electrical and plumbing work carried out before the cabinets go in, when cables and pipes are run to the positions they'll need to serve once the units are fitted. Moving a hob from one wall to another only works cleanly if the gas or electrical supply is repositioned at first fix, before the carcasses go up. See /gas-electrics-building-control.html for what this stage needs to cover.

Second fix

Second fix happens once the cabinets are in place: it's when appliances are connected, sockets and switches are fitted, and the sink and any plumbed appliances are joined up. A dishwasher that won't fill or an extractor that isn't wired to a switch usually points back to something left unfinished at second fix.

Snagging

Snagging is the process of going through the finished kitchen with the fitter and listing anything unfinished, damaged or not to specification, so it can be put right. A snagging list might note a door that's slightly out of alignment or a plinth that hasn't been cut to length, both minor jobs worth catching before the final payment is made.

Rigid build

A rigid build cabinet arrives already assembled from the factory. A rigid carcass tends to hold its joints better under the weight of a loaded drawer or a wall cabinet stacked with crockery, since nothing depends on a fitting tightening correctly on the day.

Appliance niche

The appliance niche is the space built into a run of cabinets for a built-in oven, hob or fridge, sized to fit between a minimum and maximum height set by the appliance's own installation instructions. An oven that's a few millimetres too tall for its niche won't close its cabinet door properly, which is why the appliance's own fitting instructions have to be checked against the carcass dimensions before the units are ordered.