KITCHEN DESIGN & FITTING
From an idea in your head to a kitchen you’ll love living with.
You don’t need to arrive with a finished plan, a shopping list of units or every detail already decided. Sometimes people know exactly what they want — sometimes they just know the current kitchen doesn’t work. That’s absolutely fine.
BEYOND FLAT-PACK
Handmade kitchens, built for your room.
As well as fitting supplier kitchens, I design and build kitchens by hand — cabinetry made to your room’s exact dimensions, not the nearest catalogue size.
That means no wasted gaps disguised with filler strips, no “that won’t fit” compromises, and finishes and details chosen for your house rather than a showroom. An awkward corner becomes storage. An odd alcove becomes a larder. The room gets the kitchen it deserves, not the one that happened to come in 600mm increments.
Whether you want a full handmade kitchen, hand-built cabinetry alongside supplier units, or simply made-to-measure pieces for the gaps a catalogue kitchen can’t fill — we can talk it through.
Talk about a handmade kitchenTHE LUXURY RANGE
Plywood carcases,
hand-made in-frame doors.
The luxury range is built properly, from the inside out — solid plywood carcases and hand-made in-frame doors, the traditional, higher-end way of building a kitchen. It costs more than a supplier kitchen because it's made differently, by hand, to last.
More on bespoke in-frame kitchensWHERE IT STARTS
It starts with the room,
not the catalogue.
Every house is different. Walls aren’t always straight, floors aren’t always level, and pipes, boilers, windows and awkward corners have a habit of appearing exactly where you don’t want them. That’s why I’d rather see the room before telling you what you should buy.
I’ll measure the space properly, look at the existing services and construction, and talk through what can realistically be achieved. Then we can start looking at the possibilities — maybe moving an appliance completely changes how the room works, maybe a run of tall storage frees up valuable worktop space, or maybe your original idea is already the right one and just needs refining.
DESIGN & MAKING, TOGETHER
Design with the person who is going to build it.
One big advantage of working directly with me is that the design, the making and the fitting aren’t treated as separate jobs. When we’re discussing a layout, I’m already thinking about how it will actually go together:
- Where will fillers need to be scribed?
- Will the doors clear properly?
- Where should the worktop joints fall?
- Can that cupboard genuinely fit around the boiler?
- Will the appliance doors open without fighting each other?
- Could we make better use of that awkward space?
Those details are much easier to solve at the sketch stage than when the units are already sitting in your house.
THE PROCESS
From first visit to
finished kitchen.
Whether it’s a fully handmade kitchen or supplier units fitted with care, the process stays the same: careful planning, honest advice, tidy work.
- 01
Visit, measure and talk
I’ll come to your home, measure the room properly and spend time understanding what you want from the new kitchen — what works, what doesn’t, and what you’d ideally like to change.
- 02
Explore the possibilities
We’ll look at layouts and ideas together — storage, appliances, worktops, movement through the room and how the kitchen will actually be used day to day. You don’t need all the answers before we start.
- 03
Turn the idea into a plan
Once the layout takes shape, we’ll decide what’s hand-built and what’s bought in, work through what needs ordering, and flag anything that may cause problems before money is spent. For Howdens kitchens this includes their free design service — a depot designer visits, checks the room and measurements, and produces a full CAD layout before anything's ordered.
- 04
Build & fit it properly
Then the plan becomes the real thing — cabinetry made and fitted level and true, worktops cut and jointed, panels scribed to the room, plinths and cornices kept clean and continuous, and the finishing details given the time they deserve.
MORE THAN LOOKS
A kitchen has to work as hard as it looks.
A beautiful kitchen is no good if the layout frustrates you every day. Good kitchen design is about more than choosing colours and doors — it’s about making the room work.
Where you prepare food. Where you put things away. How far you walk between the fridge, sink and hob. Whether there’s enough useful worktop space. Whether drawers clash with doors. Whether the bins are actually where you need them. Whether the storage suits what you own.
The small decisions make a huge difference once you start living with the kitchen.
NO TIES, NO RANGES
Your kitchen, your way.
I’m not tied to one kitchen manufacturer and I’m not trying to sell you whichever range happens to be on promotion this month. Most fitted kitchens I do are Howdens — bought through my trade account, with the benefit of their depot stock and quick turnaround — but you choose what suits your taste and your budget — fully handmade, supplier units fitted properly, or a mix of the two.
Want to browse the latest ranges first? See the current supplier brochures
And because you deal with me throughout, you’re not explaining your ideas to a salesperson, then a surveyor, then a completely different fitter weeks later. It’s one conversation from the first visit to the final adjustment of the doors.
PLANS ALREADY IN HAND?
Already have a kitchen design?
No problem. If you already have plans from Howdens, Wren, Magnet, IKEA or another supplier, I can look through them with you before the kitchen arrives — and fit it, or hand-build the pieces it’s missing.
Sometimes a second pair of eyes from the person actually doing the work can catch awkward details while they are still easy to change.
RECENT WORK
A few recent kitchens.
HAVE A KITCHEN IDEA? LET’S TALK ABOUT IT
“We know we want a new kitchen, but we don’t know what to do with this room.”
That’s a perfectly good place to start. Send me a few photographs of the room or give me a call — it doesn’t matter whether you have a detailed plan or just a feeling the current one doesn’t work.