The Suffolk

More or less, and we are content for you to call it that. Shaker describes a flat recessed panel in a plain stile and rail, which is what a Suffolk door is. The difference sits behind the door. Most painted Shaker kitchens are overlay, meaning the door lands on the front of the box. Ours sit inside a solid timber face frame, which takes longer to make and is unforgiving to fit, and it is the reason the reveals stay even along a nine-metre run rather than wandering.

Yes. Bring us a door, an offcut of skirting or the old tin and our polisher will match it. We work from Little Greene and Farrow & Ball as standard, mix our own when nothing in a fan deck is right, and match to RAL or NCS where an architect has specified a reference. One thing worth deciding early: if the existing paintwork has faded, tell us whether you want the colour as it was mixed or as it looks now. Those are two different mixes and only one of them will sit properly with the room.

It gets touched in. We leave a small tin of the finish coat at handover, and we come back once inside the first year to deal with anything that has marked or moved as the house has settled around the kitchen. That visit is included. After that, a chip on a painted door is five minutes with a fine brush. A broken door is a different matter, but we keep the drawings and the paint reference for every kitchen we have made, so a single front can be remade and finished to match.

From £45,000. What moves the number is the size of the room, the worktop, the hardware and how much of the rest of the house we are making at the same time. The design fee is £500 and it comes off the price in full when you order. You get a fixed quote before any timber is cut. Changes made before manufacture cost nothing, so we would rather you changed your mind at the drawing stage. Changes after machining cost money, and we tell you the figure before we start.

Fourteen to twenty weeks from brief to installation, and three to seven days on site. The long part is not the making, it is the drawing and the paint: the rod is set out full size before anything is machined, and brushed coats need time between them that you cannot compress. Stone is templated after the cabinets are in, which adds time at the end. If you are working to a date, tell us early and we will say honestly whether the programme holds.

The door. The Suffolk is a flat centre panel in a plain stile and rail, with no moulding, no carving and no astragal glazing anywhere in the range. The Essex is the same in-frame construction with a moulded door — ovolo, ogee, bolection, or a profile drawn for the room — and carving, corbels and mantels where the room asks for them. Behind the door they are built the same way. If the house is plain, the Suffolk is usually right. If it has run mouldings and architrave in every room, the Essex will sit better.

High-grade birch ply, not MDF, with solid backs. Drawer boxes are dovetailed. The face frame is solid timber and the door sits inside it with a 3mm reveal, which is why the frames are cut, jointed and fitted here and the reveal is set on the drawing before anything is machined. Hinges and runners are Blum and Häfele.

Our own polisher, in the finishing room at Mickfield. He is a trained French polisher. Brushed work is done on trestles here and sprayed work goes through our own spray department. Nothing goes out to a paint shop. Paint is Little Greene, Farrow & Ball, our own mixes, or a RAL or NCS reference where an architect has specified one.

A measured survey, drawn elevations of every run, a rendered visual, finished timber and paint samples, and an itemised quotation. It is credited in full against the order.

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. There is a six-month visit to adjust doors and drawers once the house has settled around the kitchen, and we keep parts for life, so a hinge or a runner can be replaced years later without changing the kitchen.

Honed marble, Belgian Black, limestone, slate and brushed granite all sit well against painted in-frame work. Where a household wants a surface that will not etch we specify a sintered or engineered stone instead. Solid oak, walnut, iroko and end-grain block work on an island or a baking run. Mixed runs are normal, and the joins and overhangs are detailed on the drawing rather than decided on site.

Yes, and most of what we make goes into houses that are not square. The face frame is what makes it possible: the frame is scribed to the wall and the door hangs inside it, so the reveals stay even even where the wall does not. In a listed building the questions are consent and reversibility rather than construction, and we have written about that at length in the journal.

Yes. The workshop at Mickfield is open by appointment, Monday to Friday, and there is usually a kitchen on the benches at every stage — frames being jointed, drawers going together, doors on trestles in the finishing room. It is twelve miles from Ipswich and about an hour and a quarter from London by rail. Most people who come out have already seen photographs; what the visit tells you is how the work is put together and who is putting it together.

Yes. Our own team templates, transports, fits and seals. Three to seven days on site for a kitchen. We do not hand the boxes to a third-party fitter and hope, because the reveals we spend the drawing on are made or lost in the fitting.

Regularly. Most of our work is in Suffolk, Essex, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and London, and we install further afield — including abroad, where crating, freight, insurance and documentation are priced inside one contract rather than left to you.

Yes, and it is often the reason people come to us. Square & True is the kitchen work of Reeve & Co Interiors, a Suffolk joinery house that also makes panelling, libraries, staircases and whole-house fit-outs. The same makers, the same benches and the same paint, so a boot room or a study reads as part of the house rather than an addition to it.

Not a size — a floor. Our kitchens start at £45,000, and below that we cannot make the thing described on this page. Small rooms suit The Suffolk particularly well: there is nothing on the door to crowd a low ceiling, and a plain frame gives a short run the same rhythm it gives a long one.