Heat resistant paper may also be for the underside of a worktop over
an oven.
Not everyone puts the hob over the oven for example.


I'd be more interested in "tanking" the kitchen sink cupboard.
Any leak in there basically destroys the cupboard in short order and
if your floors are not solid welcome to a mess.
If your floors are solid, you can marvel at the stupidity of woodlice
trying desperately to eat slightly moistened tile grout - energy
expenditure versus energy intake is of illogical proportions but
suggests they are powered by a yet unknown and unharnessed energy
source. However if your floors are wood you can marvel at how little
joist is actually required due to tongue-&-groove floor construction
to actually hold the remaining floor aloft until your cabinets finally
begin to succumb to the weak gravitational force. If you are lucky
enough to have Barret type chipboard flooring, the word "aloft" will
merely become a memory so much more quickly, considered normal, "they
all do that".
Rubber type tanking up the cupboard sides with a "plumbed-in" drain &
flap is not overkill, on the contrary accidents are a misnoman, they
are inevitable, destiny. Alternatively line with something that will
act as a mould release and create a simple fibreglass tray from a kit
(maybe add a sheet of kevlar to prevent cracking when whatever
ornament is dropped in there). Alternatively replace the carcass with
a mesh reinforced concrete version with appropriate tanking and mosaic
tiles, glass frontage can be added for viewing whatever leaks occur
when the door is opened to the exclamation "how did that happen?". I
say this because essentially some people use a sink like a wet room
and where the presence of a drain within it is somewhat redundant - so
little water makes it down there that a more suitable location for the
drain is on the floor behind you. The concept of "splashback" is taken
as meaning the kitchen worktop has become a wet room, whereupon
worktop construction turns into cupped wood of washboard proportions
or progressively separating particles of wood held together by a now
promise of once glue which has long succumbed to dissolving in water.
Wood particles meanwhile succumb to the dark woodlice force being the
perfect size and now mushy consistency for them to feed & breed upon
like rabbits kept in check by spiders limited in size only to that of
the kitchen's physical dimensions. Garage spiders eat your heart out,
you will never achieve the status of being named Mr "Argh, Look At The
Size Of That B@st@rd!".

Fit 1/4-turn isolators for taps etc so you can change the tap or
isolate stuff as need be. There is a floodcheck remote stopcock
available now which is another useful idea on the shopping list; it
could prove a useful "get-the-b@st@rd out the shower" device.
Alternatively it could be used to control a kitchen tap located above
the front door, since their water output is "omnidirectional", so
avoiding nuisance callers.

If you are on a shared water supply or can't easily fit a water meter
outside, ensure you design for it inside. The location requirements
are immediately after the stopcock, before any branches, not behind a
washing machine; so that's me ****ed.

Despite our sink being a Franke with frozen-food-2pk-failed-separation-
attempt-dents it has the rigidity around the taps of a lettuce leaf .
The aforementioned taps are poor (non-Franke) and tend to rock on the
tap-to-sink topside-gasket despite very large brass backing washers on
the underside. The idea of rigid copper pipe is to improve rigidity of
the pipe to tap interface, at the expense of turning the thread
interface it into a point of failure with future "drip-drip" slowly
destroying the carcass. Might be worth investigating some more rigid
bracing - like why haven't the makers done something by now? It would
only take a couple of tabs welded onto the underside to turn the area
around the tap-platform into a "box-section". Either that or wall
mount the taps so at least they remain in roughly the same place no
matter what she does to her hair in the sink. Alternatively just fit a
shower above for her hair and integral pressure washer for dishes
since whilst the mess appears the same, the amount of water used will
be environmentally less. A dishwasher can be used, but unless of the 2
foot variety can be unreliable and subject to random f@rting and
dishevelled nagged appearance. Dishwashers whilst avoiding the former
present their own risks, namely failing when asked to actually do
anything out of the ordinary capacity (somewhat like the other half)
and having no user serviceable parts readily available (again,
somewhat like the other half).

Talking of drains, it might be worth sleeving the hole through any
cavity. It would not be the first time that movement at the elbow due
to insufficient insertion of the pipe has resulted in weepage. It's
fantastic when this happens with a soil pipe because you really have
not lived until you find your cavity is full of ****. With quarry tile
solid floors you can be assured it will migrate efficiently inwards
with its delightful effluent aroma rather than taking any alternative
route which would be far too much to ask. The cavity is full of so
much brickie **** that the outer wall is almost impermeable anyway, it
can only migrate inwards. The problem is usually insufficient
insertion into the pipe - personally I like to see "pipe" exiting the
wall slightly whereas some kitchen fitters seem to want the elbow half
buried in the wall to hide their disastrous Cut & Mangled Junction. If
you suspect this, ensure the pipe is properly lubricated by ramming it
far up the kitchen fitters @rse and then inserting it into the elbow
(pipe fitting elbow). If you are not sure how far to ram it up the
kitchen fitters @rse then as far as the elbow seems a reasonable
distance considering anthropometric variation.

If your kitchen is not particularly well insulated you could insulate
behind the units to the wall. That stops a cold-point which often gets
mould on it, the insulation need only be cheap PUR rather than PIR. It
makes a difference at the calf/ankle level - and when you open the
cupboard doors you are not met by "The Day After Tomorrow" freeze as
the cold rolls across the floor. Insulation can also be added into the
back of recessed cupboards or even inside. It avoids the back of the
cupboard getting closer to the dew point in a steamed up kitchen prior
to cooking or during - filling the cupboard entirely stops the other
half filling it with so much **** anyway.

Returning to kitchen sinks, realise the middle sink will be used by
males to wash dirty water off dishes, females will merely use it to
dump various solids, child body parts, nappies, plant material and of
course hair. Pressure washer capability is useful for cleaning the
middle sink's plastic tray, because holes are *exactly* sized to snare
& retain indefinately any grain of rice. If you so much as show the
middle tray a teabag, even dry, it will immediately blush to the same
colour in contentment.

Another idea is to run 1-2 runs of 25mm flexible conduit behind the
kitchen units, particularly for any obscure MEB or cable requirement
in the future. Alternatively it can be damn funny just to confuse the
next electrician who comes along with the cable moving at both ends as
one, but each end having completely different conductor size. Such
opportunistic installations are normally limited to kitchen fitters
installing lighting, which to date, are indicative that they have
finally moved on from car alarm installion. Car alarm installers are
filtered out at kitchen fitter level if they carry their autonomous
nervous system "stick probe through every wire" trait over to domestic
wiring, typically becoming NHS surgeons instead.

Work on getting a very good seal between the splashback and the
worktop - the sink is an area where splashes are regular which does
not help the wall or grout if tiled. Most grout is porous, worktop
seals inevitably leak. I have never understood why the splashback is
not integrated into the sink - a splashback lip that essentially
overlaps the sink with underlying rubber seal. We seem doomed to have
low lip sinks (so as not to impinge on wrists, a play to the wetter
health & safety crowd), but at the rear the importance should be
minimising splash so the lip could be somewhat larger. Cunningly this
may be an attempt to convince people the worktop is in fact a wet room
where at least the bulk of mount vesuvial water flow will at some
point make its way to the sink, in some forelorne hope. Some taps are
hell-bent on spraying water everywhere - perhaps a very oversized
"sprinkler head" would resolve matters, volume without the velocity so
the entire output of the tap & local reservoir on hitting the
inevitably self-locating spoon does not create a perfectly formed
reversal all over you resulting in a scene reminiscent of a water fire
extinguisher having been set off (wet everywhere but where you want
it).

If you haven't, buy a spare cutlery drawer front, drawer-tray etc.
Certain members of the opposite sex like to slam those for reasons I
can not possibly fathom which over time has been known to break the
draw into various pieces which are then meticulously re-assembled as
an exquisite romanesque mosaic - with earthquake damage. Worse, never
leave a glue like evil-stik around whereupon all cracked or broken
objects within a mile radius (irrespective of the suitability of said
glue) can be found to have had it applied in a "brown-gunge-line".
This is because you didn't do it when asked for the 47th time, because
you did not actually HAVE the right glue - but this application
criteria information is deemed irrelevent in other people's eyes
because all glue's are in fact "glue" by virtue of their name. Any
attempt to suggest otherwise is treated as mere obsfuscation with the
argument that all alcohol, whilst differing, makes you silly and fall
over if used in sufficiently large quantities and thus the same with
"glue". If enough is used it will hold anything together. Note to hide
the hot glue gun, otherwise the universe as we know it might just...
stop.

Cables, you can identify them now or alternatively wait until fixing
cupboards - most kitchen fitters rely on the later, with replacement
cables taking on a route akin to a taxi driver left to their own
devices. Obligatory chocolate block and masking tape applies, Part P
refers to testing the sink & CW tanks.

You can actually glue the cupboards to the wall. The best way to do
this is use an epoxy mortar liberally, strip the screws from the
threads, then tile around on three sides with irreplaceable italian
tiles of utterly crap strength with an epoxy grout to ensure maximum
retention of the cupboard. In short it requires a turnbuckle pulling
upwards to a eyeplate screwed to the wall above & cupboard below,
various inserted levers and about 6 months for the bond to eventually
break. Whereupon you can marvel that you didn't damage the gas meter &
fixtures inside, but now sob uncontrollably on the floor on finding
you still can not get the cupboard off the wall because - yes you
guessed it - someone changed the layout of the meter & pipework since
the cupboard was molecularly integrated into the wall and the cupboard
will no longer pass over them. It is at this point you consider
applying the Fein/Bosch to your throat, the cupboard, or any passing
kitchen or gas fitter. Evilone cupboardnobe.

Oh yes, of course, if you are a lover of pyrex cooking ware &
worktops, the day the two have a heated encounter the result is a
blistering love affair with the worktop laminate. Thereafter it will
become a focal point of where to place any object irrespective of it
being sopping wet as it "hides it". So provide a suitable "tray" for
heated objects. Realise the opposite sex, despite having the entire
floor to drop anything on, despite the pyrex being of little monetary
replacement impact, will choose the built-in, fitted, sworn at,
sweated over, considerably higher monetary replacement *worktop* to
place it on.

Now, considering Sweden's general obsession with safety, design, who
exactly at Ikea designed that wall cabinet fixing system? Sort of a
single-think by a prison inmate given nothing to work with in an
"Apollo-mission" to fix an object to a wall with the result that the
only limited adjustment is haphazard friction lock in two dimensions
only and completely negates any adjustment to a wall not of perfectly
flat construction. Alternatively was the kitchen sufficiently
assembled for the second Swedish expression to be taking over, as
clothing & wall cabinets got deposited on the floor?