Self Storage For A Kitchen Renovation Where Everything Goes For Six Weeks

New kitchen booked — where does the old one live for six weeks?

You confirm the start date with the kitchen fitter on a Tuesday afternoon. The excitement lasts about twenty minutes. Then you walk back into the kitchen, look at the fridge, the dresser full of your grandmother’s crockery, the dining table that seats six, the slow cooker, the stand mixer, the contents of every cupboard, and you think: where does all of this actually go?

That is the moment this article is for. Not the choosing of tiles, not the worktop decision. The practical question nobody warns you about: where does it all live while your kitchen is a building site, and how do you arrange it without spending a fortune or losing your mind?

The answer is usually a self storage unit. This is how to make it work.

Why a Kitchen Renovation Needs More Than a Spare Room

Most renovating homeowners start with the same instinct: shove it in the spare room, stack it in the garage, pile it in the hall. Three problems arrive quickly.

The spare room fills up faster than you expect. A fridge, a dishwasher, a stand mixer, four dining chairs and a folded-down table take up more floor space than you think when they are all in a ten-by-ten bedroom. The garage is often damp, which means your dry crockery becomes clammy crockery, and your furniture absorbs the kind of moisture that warps joints and lifts veneer. The hall becomes a safety hazard the day the plasterer arrives with a wheelbarrow.

The Dust and Damage Problem Builders Actually Create

What a kitchen rip-out does to the air in your house is something most people underestimate until the plaster dust settles on everything in a three-room radius. Paint, plaster, sawdust and brick dust travel through gaps you didn’t know existed. They land on fabric, on crockery that wasn’t wrapped, on the felt padding on the underside of furniture legs, on the veneer of a sideboard you have been careful with for twenty years.

Moving your kitchen contents into a clean, dry, secure unit before the first skip arrives means none of that reaches them. The unit is not a dust-proof vacuum, but it is an enclosed space with no builders in it, and that matters.

Why Fitters Need the Room Completely Clear

There is a practical reason your kitchen fitter will thank you for it too. A room that is fully cleared from day one lets tradespeople work without stepping around stacked chairs and shuffling the bread bin from counter to counter. When they are not choreographing around your belongings, they work faster. When they work faster, the job runs to time. When the job runs to time, the bill does not creep.

A half-cleared kitchen is genuinely one of the things that stretches a six-week job into an eight-week one. Giving them the whole room on day one is one of the better project-management decisions you can make.

A Unit, Not a Pod on the Drive

It is worth saying what a Wigwam unit actually is, because there is a lot of confusion in this space. We are not a container dropped on your driveway. We are not a portable storage pod that sits outside your front door while the builders step around it. Our units are indoor, purpose-built spaces in a secure facility that you drive to. Clean, dry, and individually alarmed.

That distinction matters. An on-site container sits in the English weather for six weeks and accumulates whatever the weather brings. An indoor unit does not.

The Six-Week Timeline (and What to Do When It Slips)

Here is the part nobody writes down for you. Most kitchen renovation guides skip from “choose your units” to “enjoy your new kitchen” without mentioning the six or eight weeks in between. Let us put it on the envelope.

What a Typical Kitchen Job Looks Like, Week by Week

This is the honest version of what happens once the fitter starts:

Week one: Rip-out. The old units come out, the old worktops come off, the first fix plumbing and electrics begin. The room is a shell. Your stuff needs to already be elsewhere.

Weeks two and three: First fix continues. Plaster goes on where walls have been disturbed. This is the slow part. Plaster needs to dry properly before you can tile or paint. Depending on the weather and the ventilation, this takes longer than the quote says.

Weeks three and four: Tiling, painting, and the new units going in. This is where delays pile up: wrong tile delivery, a unit that arrives damaged, a worktop template that has to be remade.

Week five: Worktops measured, templated, and fitted. For stone or composite, the template to installation gap is usually seven to ten working days. This is where a five-week job reliably becomes a six-week job.

Week six (sometimes week eight): Second fix electrics and plumbing, appliances reconnected, snagging. Snagging rarely takes a day. It takes a week.

That is six to eight weeks, routinely. Not a pessimistic estimate. A realistic one.

The Two-Week Minimum and Why It Fits the Kitchen Calendar

Wigwam has a two-week minimum stay. If you have just done the arithmetic above, you will notice something: six weeks is exactly three two-week minimums. The minimum stay was not designed to penalise a short job. For a kitchen renovation, it is simply the natural unit of time. One minimum for the rip-out and plaster. One for the units and worktops. One for the second fix and snag.

Our advice is to book the unit a few days before the skip arrives, and book it out a week past the fitter’s “finished” estimate. That week of cushion is not pessimism. It is the week you will need for the snagging, the re-plumb, the worktop that needs a slight adjustment, and the afternoon you realise the extractor still has not been connected.

When the Builders Run Late

They will, sometimes. Not always, but often enough that building it into the plan is sense, not worry. The good news is that Wigwam’s terms are built for this. If the job runs long, you simply continue in the unit. If the job finishes early and you vacate before your booked period is up, unused days are refunded.

That means the financially sensible move is to book a generous amount of time rather than a tight one. You will not be punished for finishing early. You give 14 days notice, vacate once the account is settled, and any unused days come back to you. The details are in our full terms and conditions.

What to Put into Storage, and How to Pack It

The right way to approach this is in two piles: what goes into the unit, and what stays at home in your survival kit. Start with the survival kit, because it is smaller.

Appliances: Fridge, Dishwasher and the White Goods

The fridge is the one that catches people out. A fridge that goes into storage still running, or that goes in while it is still wet inside after defrosting, is a fridge that comes out smelling of mould. Defrost it completely, dry the interior thoroughly, tape the doors shut so they stay slightly ajar (this prevents the seal from moulding), and then store it upright.

The same principle applies to the dishwasher: drain it, dry it, leave the door slightly open if you can arrange it. For a range cooker, give the interior a proper clean and make sure the gas connection is handled by a registered engineer before disconnection.

One thing to say plainly: our units are clean and dry, but they are not climate-controlled. There is no temperature or humidity regulation. This is exactly right for defrosted, dry appliances and properly dried crockery. It is not a fix for already-damp equipment. The unit is “clean, dry and secure.” Bring it in dry, and it will stay that way.

Crockery, Glassware and the Dining Furniture

Wrap glass and crockery in plain white packing paper, not newspaper. The ink from newspaper transfers onto glazed surfaces and is a nuisance to remove from fine china. Box by room and by category: all the glasses in one box, labelled clearly at the side as well as the top (because you will stack boxes and only the side label will be readable).

For the dining table, disassemble where possible. Legs off, tabletop wrapped in moving blankets or furniture pads. Stack the chairs rather than leaving them free-standing, and put the heaviest items on the floor with lighter boxes on top. Use the vertical space in the unit; that is what it is there for.

What Stays at Home: The Survival Kit

Set aside one box before you pack anything else. It does not go into storage. It goes into a corner of the bedroom or the living room, and it keeps daily life running for six weeks.

In it: a kettle, a microwave, a handful of plates, mugs and cutlery, a slow cooker (your most useful appliance for the duration), a can opener, and a couple of good sharp knives. A portable induction hob if you have one. A small chopping board. A cafetiere or travel mug if coffee is non-negotiable in the mornings, which it probably is.

Six weeks without a kitchen is liveable. People do it while camping. The survival kit just needs to be assembled thoughtfully before you pack the rest.

What Size Unit Do You Need for One Kitchen?

The honest answer is: a kitchen plus the dining furniture usually fills a small-to-mid room-sized unit. Think somewhere between a large walk-in wardrobe and a small single bedroom.

Rough Guide to Sizing a Kitchen Renovation Unit

A compact modern kitchen with standard appliances and a four-seater dining set will generally fit in a unit at the smaller end of the range. A Victorian kitchen with a larder fridge, a range cooker, a six-seater extending table, a dresser, and twenty years of accumulated crockery and cookware is a different calculation.

The best approach is to walk through the kitchen and make a list of the largest items: the fridge-freezer, the oven or range, the dining table (dimensions, not just “dining table”), and the number of chairs. Everything else, boxed, is almost always less than you expect. It is the big items that drive the size decision.

What Changes the Size Calculation

A few things to flag. An American-style fridge-freezer is significantly larger than a standard one, and it cannot be laid on its side. A range cooker occupies more floor space than it looks. If you have a larder cupboard full of tinned goods, that is another set of boxes. Garden furniture that was already living in the kitchen during winter does not need to go into storage unless you are putting it back; consider whether the garden shed has room.

When you are not sure, the right move is to size up rather than down. If you leave early, unused days are refunded. If you try to cram too much into a small unit and damage something in the squeeze, that is not refundable.

Get a quote for your kitchen renovation dates at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk. Tell us the rough list of what you are storing and your renovation start date, and we will size a unit with you.

What It Costs, and How the Deposit and Refund Work

The cost of a storage unit for a kitchen renovation is not a fixed number. It depends on where you are, what size you need, and how long you take. We do not quote prices on this page because the honest figure comes from your specific situation.

How Pricing Works

You can see how our pricing is structured at our pricing page. The quote tool gives you a personalised figure based on your size, location, and dates. That is the number to work from for your renovation budget.

The Refundable Deposit and 14-Day Notice

There is a deposit. We say this plainly because some storage providers obscure it, and obscuring it helps no one. The deposit is refundable. You pay it at the start; it comes back to you at the end, once you have given 14 days notice, vacated the unit, and the account is settled with nothing outstanding. Nothing complicated about it.

What this means for your renovation planning: when you decide the kitchen is done and you want to bring everything back, give the 14-day notice at the same time. That gives you a fortnight to transport things back in manageable runs rather than a single frantic moving day. By the time the notice period expires, the last boxes are home and the unit is empty.

Full details are in our terms and conditions.

Refund of Unused Days

If the kitchen finishes early, you are not trapped paying for time you do not need. Unused days are refunded when you leave early, after giving the 14-day notice. This makes the sensible strategy a generous booking rather than a tight one. Book enough time to cover the realistic worst case. If it goes smoothly, you get the days back.

Getting to Your Unit While the Renovation Is On

Six weeks is a long time. You will forget something. Everyone does. That casserole dish you use every Sunday. The tin opener that went into a box that got labelled “misc kitchen.” The extra set of keys that somehow ended up in the junk drawer, which is now in storage.

Smart Entry, 6am to 10pm, Seven Days

Our sites use smart entry, which means you can get in from 6am to 10pm, seven days a week. Not 24-hour access, and we say that plainly because accuracy matters. But 6am means before work if you want to collect something on the way, and 10pm means after a full renovation day if you need to drop off a box that could not go on the first run.

For a six-week renovation, this window is genuinely useful. Pop in on a Sunday morning to retrieve the pasta bowls. Go in on a Wednesday evening to pick up the slow cooker because you have decided the microwave alone is not enough.

Individually Alarmed Units and What Secure Means for a Kitchen

Each unit is individually alarmed. The facility is secure. The units themselves are clean and dry.

Clean and dry is what matters for kitchen goods. Dry crockery and properly defrosted appliances will come out in exactly the condition they went in. The units are not a climate-controlled environment, and we do not claim they are. What they are is enclosed, dry and alarmed, which is the right environment for everything a kitchen normally contains.

Sites Are Unmanned: What This Means for Deliveries

Our sites are unmanned. There is no on-site team to receive things on your behalf. If you are using a removals company to bring your kitchen contents to the unit, someone from your household needs to be there to meet them and let them in. We cannot sign for deliveries, and we cannot receive goods on your behalf.

This is worth knowing before you book a removals firm. The slot you book with the removals company needs to be a slot where you, or someone you trust, can be present at the facility.

Finding a Unit Near Your Market-Town Home

The value of a local unit over a national warehouse on the edge of a city is the same as the value of a local tradesperson over a firm that drives an hour each way. You are not making a round trip of thirty miles every time you need the bread knife.

Why Market-Town Locations Suit the Renovation Customer

Wigwam’s UK market-town locations are positioned to be a short drive from the homes they serve. During a renovation, when you are already managing fitters, deliveries, decisions about grout colours and late-afternoon visits from the plumber, adding a forty-minute drive each way to retrieve something you forgot is not a reasonable ask.

A unit that is ten or fifteen minutes from home means you can call in on the way back from the builders’ merchant. You can drop off the final boxes on a Tuesday evening. You can collect the stand mixer the day before the worktops go on, because you know the kitchen is nearly done.

Where to Find Your Nearest Wigwam

Wigwam Self Storage Bath in Somerset and Wigwam Self Storage Lincoln in Lincolnshire are two of our locations. For all of our UK market-town locations, the full list is at wigwamstorage.co.uk/self-storage-locations/.

Contents Protection While Your Kitchen Is in Storage

A self storage unit is not the same as home insurance cover extended to off-site belongings. It is worth checking your own policy, but most home insurance does not automatically extend to goods stored away from the home.

Why Contents Protection Matters for Kitchen Goods

Your kitchen contains things that are genuinely expensive to replace. A range cooker, a good stand mixer, a dresser full of crockery, a dining table and chairs. These are not items you want to discover are uninsured after something unexpected happens.

Opt-In Cover or Prove Your Own

Contents protection is mandatory when you store with Wigwam. You either take our policy or demonstrate that your own insurance covers goods in a storage facility. You declare the full replacement value of what you are storing. If you under-declare and a claim is needed, it is settled in proportion to the declared value. That is standard insurance practice, but it catches people who estimate low because it feels more comfortable.

We are not insurance advisers. We signpost, we do not advise. The details of our policy are at our contents protection page. For questions about whether your existing home insurance extends to stored goods, talk to your insurer or broker directly.

The sketch on the back of the envelope ends here. A confirmed start date, a list of what goes, a unit booked with a week’s cushion at each end, and a survival kit assembled before the skip arrives. Storage becomes the settled part of a complicated project, and the kitchen that comes back will come back in the same condition it left.

Get a quote for your kitchen renovation storage at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk. Tell us your start date and what you are storing and we will find the right size.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do I do with the freezer food while the kitchen is out of action?

Plan the freezer down before the rip-out, because food is the one thing that cannot go into a storage unit. Storage is for the appliance, not its contents, so the freezer needs to be empty, defrosted and dry before it travels, and that means dealing with what is inside first. The simplest route is to run the freezer down in the weeks before the build. Stop restocking a month out, and start working through what is in there so it is as empty as possible by the start date. For whatever is left, you have a few options:

• Eat it down in the final fortnight by planning meals around the contents.
• Move the essentials into a cool box or a small spare freezer in the garage or utility for the duration, if you have one.
• Ask a neighbour, friend or relative nearby to take a drawer of your freezer space for six weeks. Most are happy to help and it is easily repaid.

What you should not do is leave food in the freezer and store it switched off, or try to keep an appliance running in a unit. Units are not powered for customer appliances, and a freezer of food left off will spoil. Once the freezer is empty, defrost it fully, dry it out, and store it with the door wedged slightly open so the seal does not mould. Your survival-kit plan and your freezer plan should be made together, a few weeks before the skip arrives, not on the morning of.

Who disconnects the gas and electric appliances, and when should that happen?

A registered engineer disconnects anything connected to gas, and competent electrical disconnection should be done properly too, ideally folded into your fitter’s schedule rather than left to the day of the move. This is a safety matter, not a corner to cut. A gas hob, a gas range or a gas oven must be disconnected by a Gas Safe registered engineer, and reconnected by one at the other end. Do not attempt to uncouple a gas appliance yourself. For electrics, a freestanding cooker on its own circuit, or hardwired appliances, should be isolated and disconnected safely, which usually means your electrician or kitchen fitter as part of first-fix. The timing matters for your storage plan. You want appliances disconnected, cleaned and dried in the day or two before your removals slot, not still plugged in when the van arrives. Build a short gap into the schedule: engineer disconnects, you clean and dry the appliance, then it goes to the unit. Coordinate the date with your fitter when you book, because a missed disconnection is exactly the kind of thing that turns a tidy move-out into a scramble. Keep any certificates or paperwork from the gas engineer, both for the disconnection and the later reconnection, in your survival-kit box rather than in a stored carton, so they are to hand when the kitchen goes back in.

Should I store integrated appliances or leave them in place?

Most integrated appliances stay where they are if the carcass around them is staying, but in a full rip-out they come out and need the same handling as freestanding ones. The answer depends on the job. If you are keeping the existing units and only changing worktops, doors or tiling, the integrated oven, hob, dishwasher and fridge often stay built in and simply get protected in place by the fitter, in which case they are not your storage problem at all. If it is a full kitchen replacement, the old integrated appliances either go to the tip, get sold or donated, or, if they are newish and going back into the new kitchen, come out and need storing like any other appliance. Treat a stored integrated appliance exactly as you would a freestanding one: disconnect it safely (gas by a registered engineer), clean and dry the interior, tape the door slightly ajar, and store it upright. The complication with integrated units is that they often arrive without their original housing or fixings, so bag and label any brackets, screws and trim that come out with them and tape that bag to the appliance. A photo on your phone of how it was fitted before removal saves a great deal of guesswork when the new kitchen goes in. If in doubt about whether an appliance is worth storing and refitting versus replacing, the fitter is the right person to advise, since the labour to refit can sometimes outweigh the value of an older unit.

What about the old units and worktops being ripped out: can those go in the unit?

No, the old kitchen carcasses, worktops and rip-out waste are not storage items, they are waste, and they need a skip or a removal plan of their own. It is a common mix-up, so worth saying plainly: a storage unit is for the things you are keeping and bringing back, not for the debris of the old kitchen. Old units, broken worktops, ripped-out tiling and packaging from the new kitchen all go to a skip, to the tip, or out with the fitter if waste removal is part of their quote. Check that point when you book the fitter, because skip hire and waste disposal are sometimes included and sometimes not, and it changes your plan either way. If any of the old kitchen is still good, an old but serviceable freestanding cooker, a dresser you are not putting back, units someone could reuse, that is worth selling or donating rather than skipping, and it can leave the house before the build rather than cluttering it during. The only things that belong in your storage unit are the keepers: the dining furniture, the crockery, the good appliances going back in, the things you have carefully boxed and labelled. Keep that distinction clean in your head when you are packing, because paying to store something destined for the tip is money straight down the drain, and unit space you could have used for the things that matter.

How do I bring everything back so the kitchen goes back together smoothly?

Bring things back in reverse order of how the kitchen comes together, and use your 14-day notice as the window to do it in calm runs rather than one frantic day. The end of a kitchen job is staged: worktops go on, then appliances reconnect, then the room is decorated and snagged. Your belongings should return on the same rhythm. There is no need to empty the unit the moment the fitter says “done,” because snagging always takes longer than expected, and a half-finished kitchen full of boxes just gets in the way. Instead, when you can see the genuine finish line, give your 14-day notice. That gives you a fortnight to move things back in manageable trips, using the 6am to 10pm access seven days a week to fit runs around work. Bring the appliances back first, once the fitter confirms the services are ready for reconnection (gas by a registered engineer again). Then the dining furniture once the floor and decorating are done. Crockery and the contents of cupboards come last, when the units are in and clean, so they go straight into their new homes rather than sitting in boxes on the new floor. This is exactly where labelling by room and category earns its keep: a box marked “glasses” on the side goes straight to the right cupboard. By the time the notice period ends, the last boxes are home, the unit is empty, and you give it back with the account settled and the deposit returned.