Made-to-measure kitchens, from survey to fitting

We design and build fitted kitchens to order for flats and houses in Moscow and the near suburbs, and we carry the whole job ourselves: survey, drawings, carcasses, fronts, worktops, installation and appliance connection. The room sets the size, not a catalogue page. You end up with a kitchen that closes against the wall it actually stands on, and with a price you can take apart line by line and see what each line pays for.

Because the production is our own small workshop, a depth of 550 mm instead of 600, a unit built around a pipe box or a run carried to the ceiling is ordinary work rather than a surcharge. We build for people who choose a kitchen once in ten years and want it to outlive the renovation around it. Where you can spend less without buying trouble, we say so, and we say what will show first if you spend less in the wrong place.

What the work covers, from survey to fitting

The first visit is a survey, and it shapes the price more than any later choice of front. We measure the room as it stands rather than as the plan promises: how far the walls lean, where the risers, the gas and the ventilation stand, how deep the window sill runs, which way the door opens and where the radiator will not move. In an older flat the walls draw the kitchen, not the floor plan.

The second step is the project. We place the sink, the hob and the fridge against how you actually cook, then choose the front, the worktop, the hardware and the lighting, and write the money beside each decision instead of at the end of it. Anything you decide to drop comes out of the drawing at this stage, while it is still a pencil line and not a cut panel.

The carcasses are cut and edged in our own shop, and their depth and height follow the room: 550 mm where a standard unit would crowd a narrow galley, ceiling height where the strip above the wall units is worth filling. Fronts are made or painted to the colour you settled on. Worktop panels are cut to the room with the sink and hob cut-outs, and a join, where one cannot be avoided, falls where it is least noticed.

Then installation: carcasses levelled and joined, the worktop laid and sealed, fronts aligned, appliances connected and tested. It is the day the kitchen stops being a stack of panels. Two things decide how that day goes, and both are settled long before it: how honest the survey was, and whether the room was ready, with electrics, water and plaster finished at the positions the drawing asked for.

Where the money in a kitchen goes

A quotation has three parts that move independently: material, hardware, and the work of cutting, edging, assembling and fitting. Length alone says least about the total. Six units in a straight run cost less per metre than the same length with a corner unit, a bin unit and a pull-out, because corners and mechanisms are where the hours go. We work the number out for your room rather than reading a price per metre off a sheet.

The worktop is usually the dearest single line, and the money sits in the working of it rather than in the material. Panels are sold whole, an offcut from the one you bought is still yours to pay for, and every join, cut-out and dressed edge is labour. A 38 mm top in a standard colour, 600 mm deep and joined once, costs what it costs. A stone top with an undermount sink and a mitred edge is a different trade and charges like one.

Fronts are the second place a price grows. Painted MDF is charged for the hours of preparation and sanding under the colour, not for the paint. A handleless front costs for the profile and the hardware behind it. Hardware is what we argue least about: hinges and drawer runners are the parts a household works a hundred times a day, and stiffness is how they answer first. Swapping a runner later is possible; getting a cheap one out of a carcass drilled for it is not.

The carcass is where you can save without lying to yourself. Plain chipboard with a properly glued edge does the same work in a dry kitchen as anything dearer, and a door hides it for ten years. Let the inside of a closed box be ordinary, and put the money into what you see and what moves.

Buy the parts you touch a hundred times a day once, and save on the parts nobody ever looks at.

What gives out first, in the order we keep seeing it: drawer runners and hinges, then the worktop edge by the sink, then the front, in whatever way its finish likes least. Behind all of that sits level. A kitchen set down on an uneven floor and never properly levelled will keep telling you about it for as long as you own it.

How an order moves, and what we need from you

The order runs survey, then project and quotation, then production, then delivery, installation and connection of the appliances. A lead time means something only once the drawing, the front and the hardware list are settled: the same set of units can take a fortnight or two months, depending on how the fronts are finished and whether the worktop panel is in the shop. A date promised before that is a guess in a confident voice.

Before the survey, clear a way into the room and have three answers ready. You should know roughly which wall the sink and the hob want to sit on, and you should have an appliance list, even an unfinished one, because a built-in oven and a hob 600 mm wide set most of the drawing. You should also know how far the renovation has got: sockets, water outlets and the height of the worktop are fixed before the tiling closes, and a kitchen ordered after the tiler has finished inherits every position he chose.

We work in private flats and houses, for owners doing the renovation themselves and for designers who want the carcass drawn properly rather than assumed. There are also days when you do not need us at all: a pantry wall or a hallway unit in standard sizes can be bought assembled and serve for years. Making is worth paying for when a shop-bought box leaves a gap you will notice twice a day, and if that is not your case, the survey says so on the spot.