Inside our kitchen workshop in Hatfield
Two units on the Bootham Lane estate in Dunscroft, about ten minutes from the middle of Doncaster. This is where every DCL kitchen is cut, assembled, sprayed and loaded onto the van.
Most kitchen companies in Doncaster have a showroom. We have a workshop, which is a different proposition and worth being straight about.
A showroom is built to be looked at. Six display bays, perfect lighting, a worktop sample board and a designer with a laptop. It is genuinely useful for choosing a colour and it tells you nothing about how the thing is made.
Ours is a working joinery shop. There is sawdust, there is a spray booth, and there is usually somebody’s kitchen in the middle of the floor in pieces. You are welcome to come and look at it, and if you do you will see your own cabinets if they are on the bench.
Concept site note. The photographs on this page came off the current DCL website and are supplier catalogue images rather than DCL’s own installations. Replacing them with real photography of real jobs is the single most valuable thing the business can do for this site.
What happens here, and what does not
Being honest about the boundary matters. A firm claiming to make everything itself and then bringing in a made-up kitchen is the thing this page exists to disprove, so here is the actual split.
| Component | Where it comes from | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Cabinet carcasses | Made here | Cut from 18mm birch ply on our own saw, to the dimensions on your drawing |
| Doors and drawer fronts | Made here | Machined, assembled and sprayed in the workshop |
| Drawer boxes | Made here | Dovetailed rather than butted, in solid timber |
| End panels and fillers | Made here | Cut on site if the wall demands it, which it often does |
| Paint finish | Made here | Sprayed in our own booth, flatted between coats |
| Hinges and runners | Bought in | Blum. Nobody should be making their own hinges |
| Worktops | Bought in, templated by us | Stone cutting is a different trade with a quarter of a million pounds of machinery |
| Appliances | Bought in | We specify and fit them, we do not make ovens |
The timber
Carcasses are birch plywood, which is a stack of thin veneers glued at right angles to each other. It is dimensionally stable, it holds a screw, and it does not swell into a sponge if a dishwasher weeps under it.
Frames and doors are tulipwood if they are going to be painted and European oak, ash or American black walnut if they are not. Painted work uses tulipwood because it is stable, close-grained and takes a finish without the grain telegraphing through.
Timber comes from a merchant in South Yorkshire and we buy it rough sawn and machine it here, which is cheaper and means we can pick the boards.
A day in the workshop
Roughly the order a kitchen goes through, though several are usually happening at once.
- CuttingSheet material is broken down to the cutting list off your drawing. Every panel is labelled with the cabinet it belongs to, because on a fourteen-unit kitchen they all look the same by lunchtime.
- AssemblyCarcasses are glued and screwed, squared on the bench and left. A cabinet that goes together out of square never comes right afterwards.
- Machining doorsRails and stiles are moulded and cut, panels are sized, and the door is glued up. In-frame work gets its frames made at the same time so they can be fitted to each other rather than to a drawing.
- SprayingPrimer, flat, colour, flat, colour. Painted work spends longer in the spray booth than it does anywhere else, and rushing it is what makes a kitchen look cheap two years later.
- Dry fittingThe kitchen is stood up in the workshop, doors hung, gaps set. Anything that needs adjusting gets adjusted here where the machines are, not in your house.
- LoadingWrapped, labelled by cabinet, and loaded in the order it comes off the van.
Come and have a look
The workshop is open Monday to Friday, 8am to 4pm. Ring first so somebody is expecting you and there is a kitchen worth looking at on the bench.
01302 350055, or use the form to arrange a time.
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