For architects and interior designers.

What we are

Square & True is the bespoke kitchen brand of Reeve & Co Interiors Ltd, founded in 2015. One workshop at Mickfield, Suffolk. We machine, joint, assemble, spray and hand-paint on the same site, and we install with our own directly employed teams, wherever the job is.

Beyond kitchens we make sash and casement windows, external and internal doors, staircases and balustrades, paneling, libraries, gun rooms, mudrooms and yacht joinery. On a whole-house job that means one supplier, one set of profiles and one point of responsibility across the package.

We have worked in the highest grades of listed building in England, in conservation areas, and on fire-damage reinstatement under insurer schedules. We have worked to conservation officers, and we have made the sample panels and the profile drawings those conversations need. The American equivalent — a landmarked house, a historic district review — is the same conversation with different letterhead.

Tolerances and setting out

We survey every job ourselves, with a laser and a level, and we record the fall of the floor, the plumb of the walls and the line of the ceiling. Nothing is machined off a client sketch or an architect plan alone.

Working tolerance on our joinery is plus or minus a millimeter (about a thirty-second of an inch) on any component and plus or minus two millimeters on an assembled run. Door and drawer reveals are held at three millimeters — an eighth of an inch — on in-frame work, and a quarter to five sixteenths on handleless work, set out on the drawing before machining.

Building tolerance is a separate matter and it is where scribes come from. We assume walls out of plumb, ceilings out of level and floors that fall, and we design in scribe stiles, sacrificial cornice material and packed shims to absorb them. On a difficult building we will build a mock wall in the workshop and cut the scribes here, three thousand miles before we need them.

Interfaces

Stone. We template after the carcasses are standing, not before, and we prefer to template ourselves or to attend the fabricator’s templater. Overhangs beyond twelve inches without support are detailed with a let-in steel plate, sized against the stone thickness and the fabricator’s advice. We need the stone specification, thickness and edge detail at drawing stage because it changes the height of every carcass.

MEP. We need outlet, switch, waste, supply and exhaust positions dimensioned before we cut carcasses. We issue a services drawing showing exactly where we want them, dimensioned from a datum, and we ask for it back marked up. Appliance data sheets are needed at the same time. Integrated units, especially refrigeration and instant-hot faucets, drive housing sizes and clearances that cannot be recovered later — and on a transatlantic job they cannot be recovered at all without a second shipment.

Ventilation and lighting. Where a grille, an exhaust path or a driver has to live inside the joinery, we want the free-area figure or the driver dimensions in writing from the consultant, and we will detail around them.

General contractor. Our contract is normally direct with the client, and we work to your schedule alongside you rather than under you. Phased delivery where the schedule needs it. We attend site meetings when the program is being set, not only when it slips.

Site, insurance and people

Installers are directly employed. We carry public liability and contract works insurance, employer’s liability, and professional indemnity covering our drawing work. Certificates are issued with the tender return and we complete contractor pre-qualification and vetting where the site requires it.

We produce a risk assessment and method statement for each installation, hold current assessments for every coating and adhesive we use, and work to site inductions, permit systems and restricted hours where they apply. We have worked to elevator bookings, doorman rules, parking suspensions and weekend embargoes, and we schedule around them rather than discovering them.

One project manager runs the job from survey to handover. The same person who takes the survey attends the site meetings, releases the drawings and signs off the punch list. You will not be handed on.

What we need from you, and when

At inquiry: plans and elevations, a description of intent, the building’s status if it is landmarked, and the schedule dates you are working to. A budget range is useful; our American minimum is $152,000 and it saves everyone time to say so early.

At design stage: the appliance schedule, the stone specification, the hardware specification, and the lighting and services intent. We can specify all of these if you would rather, but we need to know which of us is doing it.

Before we machine: signed general arrangement drawings, agreed services positions, and confirmed finishes with a sample panel signed off. Changes after this point cost time and, on veneer work, may cost the match.

Before delivery: a room that is drywalled, dry and heated, with a finished floor level established. We ask for recorded humidity under 65 percent on painted work and we will hold delivery until it is. That conversation is easier in month two than in month six.

We also draw for practices as a paid service. If you want your design intent taken to shop drawings, see the drawing service.

The drawing service →
Technical downloads →
White label manufacturing →