The atelier
A tailor's practice, applied to a kitchen
A tailor does not sell you a suit from a rail. He measures, cuts, fits and then adjusts again. A kitchen deserves the same sequence, and it cannot be delivered by a chain of people who each see only their part of it.
Five stages
Survey
Two hours in your room, with a laser and a pencil.
I measure the space myself rather than working from an architect's plan alone. Wall deviation, floor fall, service positions, window reveals and the height of the person who cooks most are all recorded, because they all change the drawing.
Drawing
Resolved on paper before anything is machined.
Elevations at scale, reveals dimensioned, appliance clearances checked against the actual model numbers. You see the kitchen as lines and shadow gaps first, which is the only honest way to judge it.
Material
Chosen from the slab and the sprayed door, never the swatch.
We stand in the stone yard together and mark the layout. Lacquers are mixed to sample and sprayed on a full door, then stood in your room at three times of day. Nothing is confirmed from a fan deck.
Machining
Cut to the drawing, with the hardware already accounted for.
Carcasses are bored for the Blum system that will actually be fitted, not adjusted for it afterwards. Fronts are handled once, edges are sealed, and everything is dry-assembled before it leaves.
Installation
I am on site, and I am the one adjusting the doors.
Scribed to a level datum, packed off the wall, then a full day given to nothing but alignment. The last hour of a kitchen is where it either becomes precise or stays approximate.
The person behind it
You deal with me, start to finish.
I founded Apex Designs because high-end kitchens kept being handed along a chain, from designer to salesperson to installer, with the detail lost somewhere in between. Here it does not work that way.
A few commissions a year, each treated as if it were going into my own home. If that is how you would like to build, I would like to see your plans.
What I will and will not do
Kitchens only
No wardrobes, no vanities, no shopfitting. One room type, done to the end of its detail.
Nothing rustic
No farmhouse profiles, no distressed finishes, no reclaimed timber. High-end surfaces exclusively.
A handful a year
The calendar is limited so each commission gets the survey and site time it needs.
No chain of hands
You brief me, and I am the person who draws it, orders it and installs it.