Lingey Close, Dalston
From the board to your kitchen
Most kitchen showrooms do the first one and the last one. The middle five happen in a building somebody else owns.
01
Somebody measures your room, then sits down and draws it. Elevations, dimensions, every cabinet worked out against the walls you actually have rather than the walls the catalogue assumes. You see the plan and the 3D images before you are asked for anything.
02
Timber comes in here in the board. Carcasses and frames are machined in our own workshop at Dalston, on a mixture of the original machinery that has been here for decades and the modern machines beside it, to the measurements on the drawing rather than to a standard width.
03
A dovetail is the quiet tell. It takes longer, it costs more, and it is the joint that is still tight after twenty years of a family pulling the drawer open with one hand. You do not get one in a flat pack, because you cannot make one in a flat pack.
04
Painted work is sprayed and primed here, in our own paint shop, by our own finisher. It is then hand-painted in durable water-based eggshell in whatever colour you chose. Natural timber is pre-finished in a two-pack lacquer that leaves a satin lustre, tough and maintenance free.
05
Carlisle, the Eden Valley, the Lakes, and over the border into Dumfriesshire. There is a kitchen at Dornock from 2023 and a dressing room in the same house from 2025, which is the kind of thing that only happens if the first job went right.
06
Installation is part of the job and not a subcontract. Our own fitting team put it in, which means the people holding the door are the people who know how it was built, and there is nobody to point at if something needs adjusting.
07
Same site since 1972, second generation, and we keep the drawings. That is the part the price is really buying: somebody to ring in ten years who can make you one replacement door that matches the other nineteen.
The people
In Thwaite Holme's own words: some of our men have been with us for twenty years plus and are the backbone of the company, and they are keen to pass their skills on to younger staff and apprentices.
That matters for a practical reason as well as a sentimental one. The firm that made your kitchen is still here in ten years, and very often so is the man who made it. Our principal fitter has been with us 20 years.
Design is Ian. Fitting is Chris and Ryan. You will meet all three.
The finishes
Talk to the workshop
