The Commission
What happens, in what order, what it costs and how long it takes. Nothing here is withheld until you telephone.
The shape of it: how to commission a bespoke kitchen
Seven stages to commission a bespoke kitchen, and you can stop after any of them. A conversation, a workshop visit, a measured survey and design, a fixed quotation, manufacture, delivery and installation, and then aftercare that does not expire when the invoice is paid.
The first two cost nothing. The third costs £500 and comes back to you in full if you commission the work. Nothing else is payable until you are holding drawings and a fixed price with your name on it.
What the design fee actually buys
A measured survey at your house — laser and tape, both, because lasers lie about out-of-square rooms. Wall lengths at low, middle and high level. Floor levels across the room. Window head and sill heights. The position of every service. How far the walls lean, because that number decides how deep the scribes have to be.
Then a full design: a plan and elevations of every run at 1:20, drawn with the doors, the drawer graduation, the cornice and plinth heights and the ironmongery in place. One rendered visual from the position you actually stand in. Timber and paint samples finished exactly as your kitchen will be finished, not sanded blanks. And an itemised quotation with a fixed price against it.
Two rounds of revision are included. Most clients use one and a half.
What it costs
Kitchens start at £45,000 and most finish between £65,000 and £120,000. The number is driven by the length of frame more than by anything else — cabinetry is priced by the metre — then by the worktop, the ironmongery, and how much of the rest of the house we are making at the same time.
You have a fixed quotation before any timber is cut. Changes made before manufacture cost nothing. Changes made after machining has started sometimes cannot be made at all, and we will say so rather than attempt them.
How long
Fourteen to twenty weeks from agreed drawings to installation, and the diary is usually booked two to three months ahead of that. Installation itself is three to seven days on site.
We do not compress it. The finishing room is the bottleneck and paint is slower than everybody expects — a painted kitchen sits in that room for the better part of three weeks. Rushing that is how you get a finish that fails in year two.
Payment
Forty per cent on order, fifty per cent on delivery, and the balance when fitting is complete. The design fee comes off the first payment.
Nothing is due on the final stage until your kitchen is in and you have looked at it. A snagging list is agreed in writing on the day and worked through within twenty-eight days.
Afterwards
Ten years on everything we make and install. We come back at six months, once the house has been through a heating season, and re-adjust every door and drawer. That is included and it is not a warranty visit; it is how the work is meant to be looked after.
We keep a record of every commission for as long as the company exists — the drawings, the paint references, the moulding profiles, the ironmongery. If you want a cabinet added in fifteen years it will match.
How a commission works
Seven stages, from the first telephone call to the adjustment visit six months after your kitchen is fitted.
What it costs
Our kitchens start at £45,000, most finish between £65,000 and £120,000, and here is exactly why.
The design service
£500 buys a survey, drawn elevations, a rendered visual, real samples and a fixed itemised quotation, credited in full against your commission.
Lead times
Fourteen to twenty weeks from brief to installation, three to seven days on site, and an honest account of what runs a job late.
Aftercare
A ten-year guarantee, an adjustment visit at six months, and a record of your kitchen kept for as long as we exist.
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