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 comes to your house and measures the room. Then they sit down and draw it. Elevations, dimensions, every cabinet worked out against the walls you have. Not the walls a catalogue assumes. You see the plan, the 3D images and an exact price before you are asked for anything.
02
Timber comes in here in the board. We cut the carcasses and frames in our own workshop at Dalston. Some of the machines have been here for decades. Some are new. They all cut to the measurements on your drawing, not to a standard width.
03
A dovetail is the quiet tell. It takes longer and it costs more. It is also the joint still tight after twenty years of a family yanking the drawer open one-handed. You do not get one in a flat pack. 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. Then it is hand-painted in water-based eggshell, in the colour you chose. Natural timber gets a two-pack lacquer instead. That leaves a satin finish which is tough and needs no looking after.
05
Carlisle, the Eden Valley, the Lakes, and over the border into Dumfriesshire. There is a kitchen at Dornock from 2023. There is a dressing room in the same house from 2025. People do not ask you back if the first job went wrong.
06
Fitting is part of the job, not a subcontract. Our own team put it in. The men holding the door are the men who know how it was built. And if something needs adjusting, there is nobody for us to point at.
07
Same site since 1972. Second generation. And we keep the drawings. That is what the price is really buying. Somebody to ring in ten years who can make you one door that matches the other nineteen.
The people
Thwaite Holme put it this way themselves. Some of our men have been here twenty years and more. They are the backbone of the company. And they are keen to pass their skills on to the younger staff and the apprentices.
That matters for a practical reason, not just a sentimental one. The firm that made your kitchen is still here in ten years. 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
