The work
A U-plan with a peninsula, in sprayed slab fronts with no handles: graphite below, a paler tone in the full-height wall units above, and a white solid worktop with a square edge carried round the return. The splashback is back-painted glass in a soft green, run in single pieces so there is no joint behind the tap.
Every appliance is integrated. The oven and the dishwasher are behind matching fronts in the base run; the refrigeration is in a full-height housing at the end of the corridor, vented through a grille in the panel above the door.
The room behind the room
A handleless kitchen is a difficult place to actually cook, because nothing can be left out. So there is a second room behind it: painted in-frame joinery in a soft green-grey, oak worktops, a double ceramic butler sink, open shelving over, and the dishwasher, the laundry and the bulk storage all in there.
It is the arrangement most of our London clients end up with. The room you stand in is calm; the room next to it is where the work happens.
Why handleless is a joinery problem
Handleless fronts have nowhere to hide. Every reveal is the same width or the eye reads it immediately, and there is no handle to draw attention away from a door that has moved. That means stable substrates, sprayed in our own finishing room rather than at a subcontractor, and a fitting tolerance measured in fractions of a millimetre rather than in shims.
Specification
| Range | The Kensington |
|---|---|
| Setting out | Drawn in CAD, then again at full size as a rod pinned above the bench. Machining is taken from the rod, not the screen. |
| Carcass | 18mm birch-faced plywood, glued and screwed, 9mm backs housed in rather than pinned on. Adjustable feet throughout. |
| Face frames | Solid timber, mortice and tenon, with scribed filler stiles where the joinery meets the building. |
| Drawer boxes | Solid European oak, 16mm sides, through-dovetailed front and back by hand, waxed. |
| Runners | Full-extension soft-close, rated to 40kg. |
| Painted work | Four coats, brushed by hand in our own finishing room, with the final coat cut in on site after fitting. |
| Oiled work | Hard-wax oil, applied and cut back three times. |
| Fitting | By the people who made it. Nothing is subcontracted and nothing arrives flat-packed. |
| Full specification | Door style, timber, finish reference, worktop, ironmongery and appliance schedule for this commission are available to specifiers on request. |
Start a conversation
Tell us about the room, the house and roughly when you would like to be cooking in it. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right people for it.
Make an enquiry