Bespoke Cabinet Manufacturing Derby

Derby's older housing stock throws up cabinet-making problems that off-the-shelf kitchens were never built to solve -- a bay window in a Victorian terrace near the Arboretum, a sloped eave in a converted attic in Chester Green, or the thick stone walls and uneven corners typical of the mill cottages around Belper and Duffield. When a run of units has to fit a specific space rather than the other way round, cabinets get built to the room's actual measurements rather than shimmed and covered with filler panels to make a standard size work.

That's the difference between a flat-pack kitchen and workshop joinery: every carcass, drawer and door is made to order rather than picked from a fixed size range, using dovetail and mortise-and-tenon joints cut by trained cabinetmakers rather than cam-and-dowel fixings assembled on site. The same approach covers kitchens, but also fitted wardrobes, home offices and staircases. See our worktop installation page for how stone and solid-surface tops are templated and fitted alongside a bespoke cabinet run, or our spray finishing page if the plan is to refinish existing units rather than replace them.

Board choice matters as much as joinery. Carcasses are typically built in birch-faced ply or moisture-resistant MDF depending on where the run sits -- a boot room or utility close to an external door gets a different specification to a dry living-room study -- and door fronts range from spray-painted MDF for a Shaker profile through to solid oak or walnut for a run that needs to take daily wear in a busy family kitchen. None of that gets fixed on a screen before the room has been measured, which is why every project starts with someone standing in the actual space with a tape measure, not a generic size chart.

On site, a bespoke fit usually means more disruption than a straightforward swap of like-for-like units, if only because measurements get taken twice -- once at the design visit and again just before the workshop cuts material, since a plastered wall or a newly laid floor in between can move a dimension by a few millimetres either way. Dust sheets go down before any old units come out, and where a wall turns out not to be as square as the first survey suggested, the fix happens back at the workshop rather than by forcing a factory-width carcass into a gap it was never built for.

• Kitchen base, wall and island cabinets built to your own measurements, including corner units and integrated appliance housings for ovens, extractors and wine fridges
• Fitted wardrobes, dressing tables, bedside units and other bedroom cabinetry
• Home office and library cabinets, including fitted desks, file storage and bookcases
• Media units, wine storage, display cabinets, and under-stairs or utility storage
• Hand-cut or precision dovetail drawers and mortise-and-tenon frame joinery, made in the workshop rather than assembled from flat-pack panels
• Fitting of hinges, soft-close runners, handles and internal storage hardware
• Delivery, on-site installation, levelling and final adjustment
• Matching end panels, pelmets and cornicing to finish a run against a wall, ceiling or appliance rather than leaving a visible edge
• Bespoke sizing for boot rooms, utility rooms and pantry storage alongside the main kitchen run
• Bin stores, appliance garages and other concealed storage built into the run rather than added as a bolt-on unit afterwards

• Stone and solid-surface worktops -- granite, quartz, Dekton, Corian and similar are laser-templated and fitted by the worktop team as a separate job; see our worktop installation page for that side of a project.
• Spraying or resurfacing units that weren't made by us -- that work sits with our spray finishing team, not the cabinet workshop.
• Appliances themselves -- we build the housing but don't supply ovens, hobs or fridges; connecting a gas hob or wiring in cabinet lighting is carried out separately by Gas Safe engineers or Part P electricians as part of the wider project, not the cabinet-making quote.
• Structural work such as knocking through walls or moving plumbing and waste runs before cabinets go in -- this is priced separately once the site has been seen.
• Travel costs for installs well outside Derby and the immediate Derbyshire and Nottingham area -- agreed upfront rather than folded into the quote.
• Tiling, splashbacks and wall finishes around the fitted cabinets -- these are priced and scheduled as part of the wider kitchen project rather than the cabinet-making quote itself.
• Flooring work under or around new cabinets -- if units are going in over a floor that needs replacing or levelling first, that's arranged as a separate trade ahead of the cabinet fit.

1. Design visit and measuring -- A free visit to measure the room, talk through style (hand-finished Shaker through to handleless) and materials, and note any sloped ceilings, bay windows or period features the cabinets will need to work around. This is also the point where board and door material get discussed against budget, since solid wood costs more than painted MDF and changes how the final quote is built up.
2. CAD layout and written quote -- A CAD design is worked up and an itemised quote provided in writing before any timber is cut, so the cost of the cabinet-making is separate from optional worktops, spray finishing or other trades on the project. Nothing is ordered from suppliers or cut until this figure is agreed, so there's no possibility of extra costs appearing once the workshop has started.
3. Workshop build -- Carcasses, drawers and doors are cut and assembled off-site to the exact dimensions taken at the design visit, with dovetail drawers and mortise-and-tenon frames rather than a standard modular size picked off a shelf. Doors, drawer boxes and carcasses are typically built in that order, with drawer joints cut first since they take the most hand-finishing time.
4. Delivery and fitting -- Finished units are delivered and fitted by the same joiners who built them, levelled, and fixed with hinges, soft-close runners and handles, timed around any worktop, electrical or gas work happening on the same project. Where a project also involves worktops, gas connections or new wiring, the cabinet fit is sequenced with those trades so nobody is waiting on someone else's work to start theirs.
5. Final check and sign-off -- Doors and drawers are adjusted for a final fit, offcuts and old units are cleared away, and the guarantee paperwork is handed over. Any snag identified at this stage is fixed by the same joiner who built the piece, rather than being logged for a separate follow-up visit, and the itemised quote from the design stage is checked off against what was actually delivered.

Bespoke workshop cabinets cost more than flat-pack because every piece is cut to order rather than mass-produced in a fixed range of sizes, and the price moves with how much hand-joinery is involved -- a run of straight base units costs less than a full kitchen with dovetailed drawers, a fitted island and matching wardrobes in a second room. Timber and finish choice, such as painted MDF against solid wood, also changes the figure, as does whether cabinets have to work around sloped ceilings, bay windows or other non-standard shapes rather than a straightforward rectangular room. Ironmongery adds up too -- soft-close runners, integrated handles and heavier-duty hinges for larger doors all sit above the cost of basic hardware, and get listed as their own line on the written quote rather than folded into a single lump sum. As a rough steer, a single run of straight base units in painted MDF sits toward the lower end of the scale, while a full kitchen with dovetailed drawers, an island and matching wardrobes in a second room sits toward the top -- but because every job is priced against its own drawing rather than a published price list, the only reliable figure comes from the design visit itself. A small run, such as a single wall of utility or boot-room cabinets, sits at a very different price point to a full kitchen with an island, and quoting the two the same way over the phone would give a misleading figure either way, which is why a phone estimate is avoided in favour of a proper site visit. Because of that range, a real cost only comes from seeing the space and confirming what's being built -- the free design visit is where a written, itemised quote gets put together, with no obligation to go ahead.

Bench-joinery training is a different route to general kitchen fitting -- it's a City & Guilds apprenticeship built around hand tools, timber selection and traditional joints, which is why the drawers on this page are dovetailed rather than stapled and the frames are mortised and tenoned rather than glued and pinned. That distinction shows up years later: dovetails don't pull apart under the weight of a full drawer, and a mortise-and-tenon frame stays square as a timber floor moves with the seasons, in a way a cam-and-dowel flat-pack joint doesn't. The same joiners who cut the carcasses in the workshop are the ones who fit them on site, so a snag on installation day goes back to the person who made the piece rather than a separate fitting subcontractor. Cabinet work carries a 5-year guarantee on labour and installation and a 2-year guarantee on products, and the team has been building and fitting cabinetry across Derbyshire for 20 years -- long enough to have worked around most of what period housing and awkward corners can throw at a bespoke run.

On a bay window run, for example, cabinets have to be scribed to follow the angle of the window rather than sitting proud behind a straight filler strip -- a job that needs a joiner comfortable working from a physical template taken on site, not a CAD drawing alone. Cabinet-making on a live building project also rarely happens in isolation: a run of units often needs a plasterer to skim around a stud wall first, an electrician to move a socket behind where an end panel will sit, or a plumber to relocate a pipe that would otherwise be boxed in by a new cupboard. Because those trades sit inside the same company rather than being brought in as separate subcontractors, a change spotted on-site during the cabinet fit gets resolved by a phone call within the same team rather than a delay while a homeowner tracks down whoever originally did that work. The business is also a registered member of CITB and FSB, memberships tied to ongoing trade training standards and small-business accountability rather than a one-off marketing badge.

The workshop is based at Sunny Hill in Derby, and most bespoke cabinet jobs are within a short drive of there -- from Victorian terraces near the Arboretum and Chester Green to newer estates around Chellaston and Mickleover. Further out, the same joinery goes into the stone-built mill cottages of Belper and Duffield, where the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site left a legacy of narrow staircases, low ceilings and understair spaces that standard flat-pack units won't fit into cleanly. Towards the Peak District edge -- Matlock, Bakewell, Wirksworth and Buxton -- older stone cottages tend to have thick walls and rooms that are rarely square, which is where made-to-measure carcasses earn their keep over anything bought off a shelf. Coverage also extends east and south to Chesterfield, Ripley, Alfreton, Heanor, Ilkeston, Long Eaton, Swadlincote and Dronfield, and into Nottingham; for jobs well beyond that radius, travel is agreed as part of the quote rather than added on afterwards. The workshop itself sits just off Stenson Road in Sunny Hill, a short run down the A5111 ring road from the city centre, which keeps travel times manageable for measuring visits and deliveries across most of the coverage area. Work also comes from landlords and developers fitting out rental properties and new-build plots rather than only owner-occupiers, and a bespoke run for a rental has to be built with tenant turnover in mind -- durable finishes and standard hardware that a letting agent can source spares for, rather than a one-off design that's hard to repair later.

A design visit costs nothing and comes with a CAD layout and an itemised quote in writing, so there's a clear figure before any timber gets cut. Book a visit while there's still room in the workshop schedule to have cabinets ready for the fit date you have in mind. Workshop slots get booked out further ahead during the busiest parts of the year, so an early measure keeps a specific fit date realistic rather than open-ended.

Kitchen Fitters Derby, Fitted Kitchens, Derby
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