Commercial Joinery & Shopfitting In Torquay
Fitting out a bar, restaurant or shop on the English Riviera?
Bar counters, banquette seating, shopfronts and reception desks, made off site and installed around your trading hours.
Torbay's visitor economy is worth around £500 million a year, and it does not arrive evenly. If you run a bar on the harbourside, a restaurant off Fleet Street or a shop in Fleet Walk, the real constraint on a fit-out is not the design - it is that you cannot lose a August weekend, and that a refit in October has to be finished before the Christmas trade. We build off site so that the time your doors are shut is measured in days rather than weeks, and we will work nights and Sundays where that is what the calendar needs.
Discuss A Commercial Fit-Out
Tell us roughly what you have in mind and we will arrange a time to come and measure. A photo of the space on your phone is usually enough to start with.
The Case For It
Built Around Your Trading Calendar
Made before we close your doors
Counters, back fittings and banquettes are built and dry-assembled in the workshop. The on-site phase is installation, not construction, which is the difference between three days shut and three weeks.
Out-of-hours installation
Nights, Sundays and the quiet weeks in January if that is what suits. We would rather work around your trade than argue about access.
Specified for commercial wear
Contract-grade ironmongery, thicker worktops, edges detailed so they survive a keg trolley. Domestic specification in a busy bar is a false economy that shows within a season.
Surfaces that take cleaning
Finishes chosen to handle repeated wiping with commercial cleaners, and details that do not trap dirt in a corner an EHO will find.
Coastal exposure taken seriously
Anything on a Torquay seafront elevation is in a salt-laden environment. External shopfronts and signage boards get a specification that reflects that, not the one we would use inland.
One trade, one point of contact
The people who drew it, made it and delivered it are the people fitting it. Nothing gets lost between a designer, a supplier and a subcontracted fitter.
- Custom Joinery Projects
- 300+ Custom Joinery Projects
- Fitted Wardrobes Built
- 100+ Fitted Wardrobes Built
- Kitchens & Fitted Furniture
- 200+ Kitchens & Fitted Furniture
- Measured Design Visit
- Free Measured Design Visit
Before You Choose
Choosing A Shopfitter On The English Riviera
How much of the work happens before anyone arrives is what decides your closure period, and it is worth being blunt about it. A firm building on site is a firm whose delays happen in your premises. A firm building in a workshop has already found the problems, because the counter has been assembled once before it ever reaches you. Ask to see it in build if you want reassurance - it is a reasonable request.
Ask about fire performance and who is certifying it, particularly in a licensed venue or anywhere with sleeping accommodation above. Wall linings and fixed seating in commercial premises may need to meet a surface spread of flame classification, and that has to be specified in the material rather than added afterwards. Get it in writing at quote stage. Your fire risk assessment will ask for it and so will your insurer.
In central Torquay there is a fair chance your premises are listed, in a conservation area, or both, so find out whether the firm has worked under those conditions before. Torbay has 864 listed buildings and 24 conservation areas, and a good number of the harbourside and Fleet Street premises sit inside them. Altering a shopfront in those circumstances can need consent even where the work is largely internal, and doing it without is an expensive mistake.
Compared
Workshop Made, Built On Site, Or Contract Supplied
The three routes to a fitted-out commercial space, judged on the thing that actually matters to a seasonal business: how long you are shut.
| Workshop made | Built on site | Contract furniture | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Days closed | Usually 2 - 7 | Often 3 - 6 weeks | 1 - 2, but layout is fixed |
| Fits an irregular building | Made to survey | Yes, but slowly | No, standard sizes |
| Where delays land | In our workshop | In your premises | In a delivery schedule |
| Design freedom | Complete | Complete | Catalogue range |
| Typical spend | £5,000 - £60,000 | £4,000 - £50,000 | £2,000 - £20,000 |
| Best suited to | Seasonal trade that cannot close | New builds and shells | Quick refresh, standard layout |
Our Process
How A Torquay Joinery Project Runs
Seven stages, in this order. The one that gets skipped elsewhere is the fourth, and it is the reason a door that shut perfectly in June catches on the frame by February.
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Visit and measured survey
We come to the house or the unit, measure the opening properly, and check what we are fixing into. Lath and plaster, solid stone, a stud wall someone put up in 1985 - it changes the fixings and sometimes the design. We take the diagonals too, because almost nothing in a Victorian villa is square.
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Drawings you sign off
You get a drawn elevation and a plan, with real dimensions on them, before anything is priced as final. Door swings, drawer positions, where the sockets end up. It is much cheaper to move a shelf on paper than after it has been cut.
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Timber selected and priced
We agree the species and the grade, and where it matters we pick the actual boards. Oak with heavy medullary rays looks completely different from quarter-sawn stock. The quote names the timber, the finish and the ironmongery, so you are comparing like with like against anyone else you ask.
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Conditioning in the workshop
The timber sits in the workshop and settles towards the moisture content it will live at. BS EN 942 puts joinery for a house heated to between 12 and 21 degrees at 9 to 13 per cent. Skip this and the piece will do its moving after it is installed, in your hallway, rather than on our racks.
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Machining and dry assembly
Cut, moulded and jointed, then dry-assembled on the bench so we find out about any problem while it is still in our building. Carcasses go together, doors are hung, drawers are fitted and adjusted. Nothing is finished until it has been put together at least once.
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Finishing before delivery
Sprayed, oiled or hand-painted in the workshop, including the backs and the edges you will never see. Sealing five faces and leaving the sixth bare is how a panel takes up moisture unevenly and bows. Finishing off site also means no spray dust through your house.
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Fitting and a snagging visit
Delivered and installed by the people who made it, scribed to the walls on the day. When it is in, we walk it with you and write down anything that needs adjusting. Then we come back once - usually a few months later, after your Torquay winter heating has been on - to ease anything that has moved.
Detail
What We Make For The Trade
Bar counters and back fittings, including the parts nobody photographs: bottle steps sized to your actual range, drip trays that drain somewhere sensible, and a counter front that survives being kicked. Fixed banquette seating built to the room rather than bought in lengths, which in an irregular Torquay building is usually the only way the seat plan works at all.
Shopfronts, fascias and window displays, made in timber where the building or the conservation area calls for it. Reception desks and office fit-outs, including meeting-room joinery and the storage walls that make a small serviced office workable. Hotel and guest house work - reception counters, fitted bedroom furniture, and the wardrobes and desks that take real punishment across a season.
We also take on the unglamorous jobs that keep a venue trading: replacing a section of counter that has been damaged, remaking a set of doors that no longer close, matching an existing fit-out where one part has failed and the original supplier has gone. If you have a photograph and a rough size, send it.
For hospitality clients who also own the building, we handle the timber windows and external doors at the same time, which is usually cheaper than treating them as two separate jobs.
Reassurance
What We Stand Behind
- Timber moved before it was cut
- Boards come into the workshop and sit there before anything is machined. Cutting a wide oak panel on the day it arrives is how you end up with a door that has cupped by Easter. In a bay where spring humidity runs high, that waiting period is not optional.
- Scribed to your walls, not shimmed to them
- Older Torquay walls are rarely square and almost never plumb. Every fitted piece is scribed to the actual surface on site. If you can see daylight behind a filler strip, the job was measured once and hoped over.
- Ironmongery rated for the job it is doing
- A drawer in a holiday flat gets pulled open forty times a week in August. We fit runners and hinges specified for that, and we tell you which ones we used, so in eight years you can buy the same part rather than replacing a whole unit.
- If it moves, we come back
- Solid timber is a material that responds to the room it lives in, and occasionally something needs easing in its first year. That visit is part of the job, not a callout. Say so and we will book it.
Budget
What Commercial Joinery & Shopfitting Cost In Torquay
£5,000 – £60,000
per fit-out
A single reception desk or a small shopfront sits at the lower end. A full bar and restaurant fit-out with counters, back fittings and fixed seating throughout sits at the upper end. We will price in phases if you want to spread the work across two closed seasons.
Guide range only, VAT included. Your figure comes from the measured visit and the drawing you sign off, not from this page.
Full cost breakdownQuestions
Commercial Joinery Questions
- How long will we have to close?
- For a bar counter and back fitting, usually two to four days. For a full restaurant fit-out with seating throughout, closer to a week or two. Because everything is built beforehand, the closure is installation time only. We will give you a day-by-day sequence before you commit, so you can decide when to schedule it.
- Can you work overnight or on Sundays?
- Yes, and we often do. Tell us your quietest window and we will build the programme around it. There is usually a premium for out-of-hours work, and it is almost always less than the trade you would lose by closing in season.
- Do you handle fire regulation requirements?
- We specify materials to the required surface spread of flame classification where your premises need it, and confirm it in writing with the quote. What we do not do is act as your fire risk assessor - that is a separate professional appointment, and we will work to whatever their assessment specifies.
- Do you work with designers and architects?
- Regularly. If you have a designer, we will price and build to their drawings and flag anything that will not work in practice before it becomes a problem. If you do not, we can work from a conversation and a survey, and produce the drawings ourselves.
- Can you match an existing fit-out?
- Usually. We take profiles and finish samples from what is there and match to them. Matching an aged finish is harder than matching a new one, so we will make sample panels and get you to approve them under your own lighting before anything is made.
- Do you work outside Torquay?
- Yes. Paignton, Brixham, Newton Abbot, Totnes and Teignmouth are routine, and for a commercial project of reasonable size we will travel further across South Devon. Tell us where you are and we will be straight about whether the travel makes sense for the job.
Feedback
What Customers Say
Rated 5 out of 5
“Our bedroom is in one of the old Warberries villas and the back wall bows by about an inch and a half across four metres. Two national firms measured it, quoted, then went quiet. These came, measured, and said it needed scribing rather than filling. The wardrobes go right into the corner and there is no gap anywhere. My husband keeps running his hand down the join.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“We run a bar on the harbourside and needed the counter and back fittings replaced without losing a summer weekend. They built the lot off site, came in on a Sunday night and had us trading by Tuesday lunchtime. Knowing the whole thing was made before they ever shut our doors is what sold it.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“Sash windows on the front elevation, and we are in a conservation area so it had to be timber and it had to match. They took a profile off the original, made new boxes in accoya, and the planning side went through without a query. From the pavement you genuinely cannot tell which is which.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“Two alcoves either side of the chimney, and they turned out to be 40mm different in width, which explains why the flat-pack ones we tried first never sat right. Made as a pair but to two different sets of measurements. Small thing, but it is the difference between looking fitted and looking bought.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“We let our place out over the season so everything gets hammered. I asked them to over-specify the drawer runners and they did, and told me exactly which ones so I can order spares. Three summers in, nothing has sagged. The last kitchen we had did not last two.”
Coverage
Where We Work
Most of our work sits inside Torbay, because fitted joinery needs at least two visits and often three. Further out we go as far as the drive stays sensible - Newton Abbot and Totnes are routine, and we have taken work down to the South Hams when the job justified it.
Across Torquay
- Wellswood
- The Warberries
- The Lincombes
- Chelston
- Babbacombe
- St Marychurch
- Cockington
- Shiphay
- Torre
- Ellacombe
- Livermead
- Maidencombe
And across South Devon
- Paignton
- Brixham
- Newton Abbot
- Teignmouth
- Shaldon
- Dawlish
- Totnes
- Kingskerswell
- Marldon
- Galmpton
Or go straight to a service
Tell Us When You Can Afford To Close
The jobs we like most are the ones other people have measured and walked away from. Send a photo and a rough size and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth making, and roughly what it would come to.