Aftercare

The guarantee: what kitchen aftercare covers

Kitchen aftercare starts with ten years on our cabinetmaking, joinery and installation. If a joint opens, a frame racks or a carcase fails, we come and put it right.

Hardware carries its own maker’s guarantee. We will tell you what that is for the hardware specified on your job, give you the paperwork, and help you make a claim under it rather than sending you to a website.

Finishing is covered for the same ten years against defect — a finish that lifts, crazes or fails to adhere is ours to put right. It is not covered against wear, and no honest finisher would tell you otherwise. A painted door beside a range cooker will show its life within a decade. That is what repainting is for, and it is maintenance rather than a claim.

The six-month visit

We come back six months after handover, once the house has been through a heating season. Half a day. No charge, whether anything has moved or not.

We adjust every hinge and every runner, check the doors line through, ease anything that has tightened, re-level plinths where floors have settled, and re-oil timber worktops. Timber moves in the first year. This is the visit that catches it.

Looking after painted work

Warm water, a little washing-up liquid, a soft cloth, dried straight after. That is all.

No solvent, no cream cleaner, no scouring pad, no wipes containing bleach or alcohol. Any of them will burnish a hand-brushed finish and leave a shiny patch you cannot get out.

We leave you a labelled tin of your paint, mixed from the same batch, and the code. Chips on an edge can be touched in with an artist’s brush.

Looking after timber and stone

Hard-wax oiled worktops want re-oiling roughly every six months in the first two years, then once a year. Clean with a damp cloth, wipe standing water, and keep the sink surround dry. A ring or a scorch sands out; we will show you how, or come and do it.

Lacquered and French-polished surfaces take no water and no alcohol. Coasters and a dry cloth.

Quartz and sintered stone need nothing but soap and water. Marble, limestone and slate are porous and want sealing on fitting and again every year or two. Marble will etch where lemon and wine sit on it. That is the material behaving as marble does, and we say so before you choose it.

Repainting

A hand-painted kitchen in a busy house looks tired at about fifteen years, and a quiet one at twenty. It does not need replacing. It needs repainting.

We take the doors and drawer fronts back to Mickfield, strip, fill, prepare and refinish them in our own booth, brush the frames in situ, and refit. Usually about two weeks, with your kitchen fully usable throughout apart from the doors.

Same colour or a different one. It costs a fraction of a new kitchen, and it is the reason we build carcases from birch ply rather than particleboard: the boxes outlive the colour.

Parts for life

We keep your cutting list, drawings, paint code, timber source and hardware schedule for as long as the company exists.

So we can make you a single replacement door in ten years, in the same timber, to the same profile, in the same colour. We can add a cabinet to a run and have it match. If a hinge pattern is discontinued we hold the drawing and can machine round the replacement.

Moving house

People do take them. We have removed kitchens, stored them, remade what did not fit the new room and refitted the rest.

It is not free and it is not always sensible: if the new room is a different shape you may be paying to rework more than you keep. We will survey both, tell you honestly what carries over and what does not, and price the two options side by side. Sometimes the answer is that you should leave it and start again. We have said that before.