Paint and finish.

Our own booth

We finish everything ourselves, at Mickfield, in a booth built for the purpose: extracted, filtered, heated and lit for color.

That matters more than it sounds. A workshop that sends painting out has to package unfinished doors, send them fifty miles, wait, and accept whatever comes back. We can spray a door in the morning, look at it in the afternoon, and cut it back and do it again if it is not right. Nobody has to be told.

One polisher, every board

Finishing is done by a trained French polisher who is also our spray manager. He is the only person who finishes our work.

A dedicated in-house French polisher is not something every kitchen workshop has. Having one man do every board means the sheen matches across forty doors made over five weeks, and it means the person who mixed the color is the person who will touch it in at handover.

He also makes every sample. Brushed out on the actual door profile, in the actual paint, so you judge the color on a molding under your own kitchen light rather than on a card. Samples travel to America before the kitchen does.

Sprayed or hand-brushed

Both are proper finishes and neither is a compromise. They look different, so we show you both before you choose.

Sprayed gives a flat, even, almost seamless surface. It suits contemporary work, plain slab and Shaker doors, and any color where you want the form read before the surface. It is quicker, so it costs less.

Hand-brushed leaves the faintest laid-off brush texture. On a run of in-frame doors in an old house it looks correct in a way a sprayed finish never quite does, and it catches light along a molding. It takes longer, coat for coat, and adds ten to twenty percent to the painted work.

Both are primed, filled, de-nibbed and flatted between coats. The difference is the last stage, not the preparation.

Color

Any color you like, matched to RAL or NCS, or matched by eye to a card or a sample you send us — a Benjamin Moore or Farrow & Ball chip travels perfectly well in an envelope. We make the board in the real timber and the real system before anything is committed.

Custom mixes where you want something that is not in any book. Send us a fragment of a curtain, a piece of glazed tile, a chip of the baseboard from the room we are working in.

We match to RAL and NCS references, which is usually what an architect or a general contractor will specify on a larger scheme.

Matching a color

Matching is done by eye, against the sample, under the light the piece will live in. A spectrophotometer will get close; it will not account for the fact that a color on a flat card and the same color on a beaded panel are not the same color.

So we mix, brush out, look, adjust, and look again the next morning. Two or three iterations is normal for a difficult match. It is included.

We record the final formula against your job, and you are left with a labeled can from the same batch.

Oil, lacquer and wax

Hard-wax oil for timber countertops and any surface that will be worked on. It sits in the timber rather than on it, so it is repairable: a burn or a ring is sanded and re-oiled locally with no line where the old meets the new. On a kitchen three thousand miles from the bench, a repairable finish is worth a great deal.

Clear lacquer, sprayed, for interiors, shelving and anything that wants protection with no color shift. Washed and limed finishes where a paler, chalkier oak is wanted. Fumed oak where a deeper one is.

We use water-based systems where the surface and its use suit them, and solvent-based where they do not. On a mudroom bench or a sink surround we will specify the coating that lasts, and tell you which we have chosen and why.

French polish

Shellac, applied with a rubber, built in many passes over several days. It is the traditional finish for fine furniture and for library and gun room interiors, and it gives a depth no sprayed coating reaches.

It is also the least robust finish we offer. It will not take standing water, heat or alcohol. We will not put it on a countertop, and we will say no if you ask.

Where it belongs it is unmatched, and it revives by hand rather than needing stripping. It is done here, at the bench, alongside everything else.

Hand-painted or sprayed →   Painted kitchens and American weather →   The workshop →