Bespoke kitchens, designed, made and fitted
Four ways of building a kitchen, all made in our own workshop and all cut to your room rather than to a list of standard widths. The construction decision comes first, because it changes both how the kitchen looks and what it costs.
A bespoke kitchen is one where the cabinets are made for your room. That is the whole definition and everything else follows from it.
A modular kitchen is built from a fixed set of cabinet widths. The design work is fitting your room to those sizes and filling what is left with panels, which is why a modular kitchen in an old house so often has a 90mm strip of painted board next to the fridge. Ours are cut to the gap that is actually there.
What that costs, and where the money goes, is on the prices page with real figures rather than "prices on application".
The four constructions
Pick this before you pick a colour. It changes the price more than anything else on the specification.
Every carcass is birch ply, and that is not a detail
Most kitchen carcasses in Britain are 15 or 18mm melamine-faced chipboard, stapled and dowelled. It works, it is cheap, and it turns to porridge the first time a washing machine leaks under it.
Ours are 18mm birch plywood, glued and screwed, with a solid back rather than a thin panel in a groove. It costs more and nobody ever sees it. It is also the reason a DCL kitchen can be taken off a wall in fifteen years and put back on a different one.
Drawer boxes are dovetailed rather than butted, because a drawer front takes a pull every day for decades and a butt joint eventually gives up.
Kitchens we have made
Different rooms, different constructions, different budgets.
Questions people ask
Before the survey, usually on the phone.
What actually makes a kitchen bespoke?
That the cabinets are made to your room rather than picked from a list of widths. A modular kitchen comes in fixed sizes, usually 300, 400, 500, 600mm and so on, and the designer’s job is to get your room as close to those as possible, filling the difference with panels. Ours are cut to whatever the gap actually is.
It matters most in older houses, where nothing is square and a chimney breast or a boxed-in soil pipe eats the run. It matters least in a new build with flat square walls, where a good modular kitchen fitted well will look almost as good for less money.
Do you make them yourselves, or is it made elsewhere?
We make them. Carcasses, doors, drawers, end panels and any odd piece the room needs, in the workshop in Dunscroft. There are pictures of it here.
Worktops we do not make. Stone is cut by a specialist from a template we take once the units are in, because that is a different trade with different machinery.
How long does the whole thing take?
Six to eight weeks in the workshop once you have signed the drawing, then around a fortnight on site. Before that there is the design stage, which takes as long as it takes because it is the cheap place to change your mind.
So from first survey to finished kitchen, allow a couple of months, more if you are having building work done first.
Can you work with my builder or architect?
Yes, and it is easier if we are in early. If a wall is coming out or a window is moving we want to know before the kitchen is drawn, because the design changes and so does where the services need to be.
We will give your builder dimensioned drawings with the electrical and plumbing positions marked so first fix happens in the right places.
Start with a drawing of your room
An hour at your house with a tape measure, then a plan and a price with everything itemised. Free, and nothing to sign.
Ring 01302 350055 or book a visit below.
The workshop
Unit 1 & 2, Bootham Lane Industrial Estate, Bootham LaneDunscroft, Doncaster
South Yorkshire DN7 4JU
Monday to Friday, 8am to 4pm
Directions and opening hours