Our customer had lived with pine-built fitted wardrobes for a long time. Since buying their house 25 years ago, they promised themselves when the kids left home they would treat themselves to hand-built, tailor-made wardrobes exactly how they wanted them. They had a long time to think about what they wanted, the internal storage had to be right. Currently, there were lots of snags about their pine wardrobes which needed to go. One of the main drawbacks was not enough shelves or drawers plus, the door nearest the window always hits the ceiling when opened. Their new built-in wardrobes had to have easily accessible shoe drawers – a ‘his’ and ‘her’ side and a tie & belt rack for him. Lots and lots of internal drawers are all a must. They asked us to fill all of the available space and they wanted a hand-painted finish. Their new David Haugh bespoke wardrobes truly are an example of beautifully fitted furniture meeting all of the customer’s needs.

Dear Andrew, Sue, David, and the rest of the team at David Haugh.

Just like to express our thanks and gratitude for everything you have done both with the kitchen and the wardrobes.

Such a fantastic job and would not hesitate to recommend David Haugh in the future

“Thank you”

This kitchen has had its day. Doors and drawers were dropping and there was not enough storage for everything to be stored away, out of sight. Mr & Mrs X explained that they wanted a clean, unfussy kitchen with plenty of storage. The ‘before and after’ pictures tell the story.

A fusion of real oak veneer with spray-painted dark blue cabinets in a handleless range of cabinets with white corian worktops met all their expectations.

DH Ltd Bespoke – the story of COATES Hand painted kitchen

Another beautiful hand made Shaker kitchen from David Haugh.  The hand-painted cabinets expertly finished in three colours cleverly combined to surround her Aga which took centre stage.

Bright chrome knobs with backing plates bring out the dark colours handsomely.

At David Haugh, our team has over 30 years of experience in the design and manufacture of bespoke kitchens ranging from our signature Shaker styles to unique English Contemporary Kitchens and beyond. All our kitchens are handmade locally at our workshop.

To broaden our offering even further, we also work with Kent-based Stoneham Kitchens, a prestigious brand that carries the Royal Warrant and is intensely proud of its five generations of family ownership and 150-year British heritage. Stoneham Kitchens specialise in stylish, bespoke kitchens, using a combination of contemporary kitchen design and state-of-the-art engineering to create luxury modern and traditional kitchens for English homes.

In a recent interview, Managing Director Adrian Stoneham extolled the virtues of buying a British kitchen. If you are not sure why buying British is an excellent choice for your new kitchen, he makes some compelling arguments:

What distinguishes British kitchens from others on the market?

British design and manufacturing has a long and rich heritage but also has a reputation for driving innovation. A British kitchen gets the right balance between the latest design trends and innovative technology while upholding classic and timeless style.

British manufacturers are known for their high-quality craftsmanship, so there is an unspoken level of trust between you and the manufacturer that you are getting a high-quality product that will stand the test of time.

What other benefits are there to buying British kitchens?

By buying British, customers can be assured that they know exactly where their kitchen is coming from and can see the quality of their new kitchen at a local showroom or the manufacturer’s workshop. Service is also key as the customer has instant access to skilled designers and project managers who are involved throughout the kitchen journey. This allows the customer to work closely with the team to ensure their requirements are met.

Consumers are also now preferring ethically sourced and greener products, so buying British has become more appealing. With the transportation of goods contributing significantly to the high levels of carbon emissions, by buying British you are therefore contributing towards the reduction in our carbon footprint.

Furthermore, by buying a British kitchen you are supporting talented British designers and manufacturers, which, in turn, supports the economy and helps keep skills alive in the industry.

How integral is ‘Britishness’ to the Stoneham brand?

The benefit of having your kitchen designed and manufactured in Britain by a British company is a real draw for our customers. We are proud Royal Warrant holders, awarded to us in 1995 in recognition of our supply of goods and services to the Royal Households of the Queen. We are honoured to be part of a select group of British suppliers recognised for credibility, dependability and quality.

Now in our fifth generation of family ownership, we have been handing down skills since 1864, ensuring that the British quality and craftsmanship we have become known for will continue to be upheld.

At David Haugh, we are delighted to work in affiliation with Stoneham Kitchens whose values we share wholeheartedly. It is certainly the case that homeowners across the UK will be reassured to have the certainty of dealing with a UK source of production and technical back-up while supporting the UK economy now that we are no longer a member of the European Union.

If you would like to find out more about British kitchens at David Haugh, including Stoneham Kitchens, and would like to discuss your next kitchen project, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

The Bryant’s came to our showrooms and workshops because Ian Bryant had cycled past our premises for many years and saw the refurbishments to the front of our building taking shape. He felt it was time to take the plunge and see what we are all about as he was thinking that it was the right time to go ahead with his extension plans. Val and Ian enjoyed meeting us and having a tour of our workshops – they saw beautiful kitchens being made for other customers and they felt certain that they wanted to use a local business to make their kitchen.

The Robert’s came to see us with ideas for a period kitchen in their listed house.  At first glance, they were not sure if we were going to be ‘off the scale in terms of price, but quickly were reassured when Andrew, our designer developed a scheme which suited their budget and catered in every detail to their ‘wish list’.

Our new design office was always planned to be at the front of our building; it will overlook a lovely garden and forecourt.   The office has a large picture window (for us to look through) and for customers to see us from the road and when they park for visits to our showroom.  Through the large office window customers can see our cosy office and get a glimpse of the bespoke furniture David Haugh designed and made.  The idea for the look of the furniture all began some time ago when David and Sue selected a specialist veneer called ‘fumed eucalyptus’, the colour of which is a rich dark brown giving the timber a smokey look.  Apart from it’s beautiful colour,  this veneer has an attractive horizontal grain.

The colour scheme for the new design office had to compliment the darkness of  the fumed eucalyptus.  Sue decided on a pale white planked oak floor, light blue /grey fro the walls, a Cole & Son graphite grey wallpaper called ‘Woods’.  There are some light grey wall boxes incorporating a few burnt orange coloured backgrounds.  The décor had to take second place to the stunning veneer.

The refurbishment of the office was completed mostly by David Haugh starting in March 2017, but the rest of the team also got involved.  We started with plaster boarding the ceiling and walls, fitting new windows and a door, landscaping the entrance to the office, levelling the floor before a Karndean vinyl floor cover was laid.  Plastering next, followed by painting and a stunning feature wall paper on one wall.  Whilst all of this preparation was going on, designing and making the office furniture began. Sue has a particular wall decoration (a tribute to her Dad’s own study) , which will take pride of place shortly.

Light grey corian worktops will adorn the furniture, soon to be installed. Watch this space.

At David Haugh we not only design and build spectacular kitchens, but we also make furniture for other rooms in the home. We were delighted when we were commissioned with building a library and snug in a beautiful Edwardian property in Tunbridge Wells.

We sat down with our clients to discuss their hopes and dreams for the perfect outcome. They wanted a cosy space where they could curl up and read a favourite novel, but for the space to have the essence of a grand and dramatic library. We listened carefully to what our client asked for in a library for the home and came up with a design they instantly fell in love with.

We agreed on the dark navy paint colour. As I am sure you will agree, it adds real depth and a sense of drama and mystery to the room, especially as the whole wall is filled with a bespoke library shelving unit. The tall ceiling in this Edwardian home lends perfectly to the grand design.

We added a unique rolling ladder system to enable easy access to the higher shelves and the whole design gives the room a charming sensibility. The ladder is positioned at an angle to enable easy access to shelving that would otherwise be out of reach, but we made sure the design enables the ladder to be tucked away vertically when not in use. Our client loved this very neat design element, which is perfect for tall shelving.

To bring the room together we also added some built-in cupboards on the opposite wall to the shelving, which gives the room a complete look. We think the beauty of any room is in the detail and we are really proud of what we achieved in this gorgeous Edwardian home. Our client was absolutely delighted too.

David Haugh has been building bespoke furnishings since the 1980s. If you want to lift your home from ordinary to extraordinary and have a design idea for any bespoke furnishing, get in touch to discuss your vision with David and his expert team today. Call us now on 01892 750310.

We are celebrating the completion of Emma and Jamie’s kitchen. They are delighted with the result and so are we. If you recall from our previous blog post we were absolutely thrilled when our daughter, Emma, and her partner Jamie approached us earlier this year to design a beautiful bespoke kitchen for their home in Sevenoaks.

Well, after weeks of careful design and handcrafting, the kitchen is complete, built and fitted to perfection. We treated Emma and Jamie just as we would any other client and gave everything our absolute best as usual. We live, breathe and sleep kitchens and we confess we were really excited to be sharing the love and making a kitchen for someone in the family.

We incorporated all of Emma and Jamie’s ideas into the design and we have to say we couldn’t agree more highly with their choices. They opted to have their cabinetry hand-painted in a beautiful warm sage green and picked ceramic cream tiles to go behind the range cooker and below the cupboards on the walls. They hoped for a traditional, warm kitchen and the result is exactly true to form as you can see.

Perhaps our proudest moment was in the design and build of the standalone dresser, which we are sure you will agree is an absolute showstopping feature in this kitchen. We created a special oak ‘X’ box in the middle of the dresser to store wine, which we think is pretty neat. Sometimes the small details matter as much as the big ones.

This beautiful dresser gives the kitchen a completely unique and refined feel and proves that modern functionality can be as much a part of traditional kitchen design as a contemporary one.

We are also smitten by the tall curved storage cupboards we made to create a neat utility room arrangement off of the main kitchen space. That is the beauty of bespoke – everything fits perfectly like it was meant to be. We can’t wait for our next invitation to see Emma and Jamie. This is definitely a kitchen we are looking forward to spending time in. It’s not often we regularly get to admire our own handy work.

If you are considering a new kitchen and would like to know more about our kitchen design process, don’t hesitate to call us. We would absolutely love to make your kitchen dreams a reality.

All of our kitchens are handmade in our own workshop. Feel free to pop by and see us at our showroom and see us at work in the workshop close to Tunbridge Wells.

We were thrilled when our daughter Emma and her partner Jamie asked us to design a beautiful bespoke kitchen for their home in Sevenoaks. We began by discussing design preferences. As we do with every client, we needed to understand exactly what it was Emma and Jamie wanted from their kitchen and how it would complement their home. With every kitchen we are commissioned to design and build we want to ensure we can deliver a kitchen that lives up to expectations aesthetically, and also functions perfectly too.

Once we had honed down exactly what Emma and Jamie wanted from their kitchen, both in looks and functionality, we settled on a bespoke painted kitchen style to incorporate elegant curved cabinetry and oak worktops.

All of our bespoke painted kitchens are made in our own workshop in Tunbridge Wells. Take a look at our process in pictures and see how Emma and Jamie’s kitchen takes shape.

This is a David Haugh bespoke kitchen being prepared for hand painting on site. Notice we have used a similar under coat primer colour. This enables us to achieve the best results when we finally hand paint the kitchen on site.

We are sure Emma and Jamie will love the elegance of the tall curved cupboard being made. You can see below the processes of fitting two curved doors onto the curved carcass. We fitted one door at a time for accuracy.

Here you can see the tongue & groove panelling shown on the side of the tall curved cupboard.

Here’s an oak worktop on the planer, ready for sanding, which will be fitted onto a dresser.

And here is more of the kitchen taking shape. We’ll let you see the finished article when we’ve meticulously finished our work and installed our latest David Haugh kitchen in its rightful place.

If you would like to chat with us about a beautifully crafted bespoke kitchen for your home, give us a call on 01892 750310. Or why not come and see some examples of our work at our showroom. We are located just 3 miles south of Tunbridge Wells town centre. We would love to meet you and discuss your kitchen project ideas. See our contacts page for directions and opening hours.

At David Haugh we are always happy to receive feedback on the work we have done for our clients. We recently received this lovely testimonial from a very satisfied client. To see more of the great feedback we have received over the years, take a look at our Customer Testimonials page.