Paignton is really two towns, and the bespoke joinery each one needs is different. Up round Winner Street and Church Street is the medieval core, with red breccia, a few cob walls and sash windows the council would like to see kept in timber. Below the railway, and out towards Preston and Goodrington, the town is mostly Victorian streets, twentieth-century semis and bungalows, and a long run of guest houses and holiday lets behind the seafront. Those houses need kitchens that work for a family of five, wardrobes that use the whole bedroom, and fittings that survive a summer of changeover days. We draw, make and fit all of it from our workshop in Barton, about twenty minutes up the road.
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 Joiner Behind It
Paignton's medieval streets round Winner Street want their timber sashes kept. The semis and family homes below the railway want kitchens and storage that work hard. A joiner here has to handle both.
That range comes from a lifetime in the trade. Luke started as a child, joinery runs in his family, and what he learned that way isn't on offer at any trade school. He and the team cover both halves of the town.
About Paignton
The 1840s tithe map shows Paignton as a strip of houses along Winner Street and Fisher Street, with a cluster round the church and the Bishops' Palace, whose Coverdale Tower still stands beside the churchyard. Kirkham House, a late medieval stone house now cared for by English Heritage, sits a few streets away and still has some of its original oak beams. Then the railway arrived in 1859. The land between the old town and the sea, much of it marsh, was drained and built over with terraces, Torbay Road among them, and a pier went up in 1879. That is why the old centre faces inland and everything newer faces the beach.
Preston only came under Paignton's urban council in 1922, and a great deal of what you see between there, Goodrington and the town centre is later still: semis, bungalows and short terraces built through the twentieth century for families and retired couples. Most of our Paignton calls come from those streets rather than the conservation area. The rooms are a sensible size and fairly square, so the arguments are about layout, not wonky walls. Can the kitchen take an island? Where does a family put five sets of coats? The seafront is different again. Plenty of the big guest houses are now flats or holiday lets, and their owners want joinery that can be cleaned quickly and will not fall apart after one season.
Services In Paignton
A town this size asks for almost everything we make at some point. These three come up again and again, in family homes behind the seafront and in the older houses up the hill.
Knocking the back room into the kitchen is the classic Paignton semi project. Once the wall is gone, you have a long room with a door at one end and a garden at the other, and a kitchen drawn for that shape works far better than a catalogue L.
Read more about Bespoke Kitchens
Bedrooms in twentieth-century Paignton houses tend to be square and honest, which is good news: a full-height wardrobe can go wall to wall with almost no packing. Bay-fronted rooms are where people waste space, and where a made piece earns its keep.
Read more about Fitted Wardrobes
In Old Paignton and Polsham, timber sashes and panelled front doors are part of why the streets are protected. We make replacements to match the old sections and glazing bars, not chunky copies that give the game away from across the road.
Read more about Timber Windows & DoorsWhy It Matters Here
Most Paignton kitchens we plan are for households where four or five people cook, eat and do homework in the same room. We set out bins, drawers and seating for that, not for a showroom couple who eat out.
Changeover day leaves about four hours to clean a flat. We specify finishes that wipe down, hinges that tolerate strangers and edges that do not chip, so a seafront let looks the same in September as it did at Easter.
The appraisal for Old Paignton singles out the plastic windows with thick frames and fake glazing bars. When we replace a sash there, we copy the original meeting rail, horns and bar profile so the house reads as it should.
Some of the oldest walls in the old town are red breccia or cob, and neither takes a fixing like brick. We check what is behind the plaster before we design, and choose fixings that will not crumble the wall.
Plenty of Paignton's semis have a front bay that ends up holding a sofa nobody sits on. A built-in seat with deep drawers underneath gives that space a job, and somewhere to sit and watch the street.
Coats, school bags, scooters and the hoover all need somewhere to live in a family house. We fit hallway cupboards and under-stair pull-outs at heights the children can use, so things get put away rather than piled on the newel post.
From The Workshop
This is a kitchen we built: a long, low run of oak drawers along the wall, with lit shelves floating above it, a dark island faced in the same oak, and tall black units at the back to hide the appliances. The flagstone floor and the thick, rough-plastered wall tell you the house has some age to it, so the run had to be scribed to a wall that is anything but flat.
We show it on this page because the idea behind it suits a lot of Paignton homes. Low drawers do the heavy storage and the shelves above keep the room open, which matters in a knocked-through semi where the kitchen is also the dining room. For the full picture of what goes into a made kitchen, see our kitchens page.
Reassurance
Our Process
The process is the same seven steps wherever we work. In Paignton the first and last visits change a little, because seafront parking, holiday bookings and tenants all affect when we can be in the house.
We come out, measure every wall and check what the floor is doing, because a knocked-through Paignton semi often has two floor levels where the old wall stood. In the old town we check whether the walls are breccia, cob or brick before anything is drawn. For a holiday let, we ask about your booking calendar and plan the visit for a gap between guests.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We fit in one go where we can, and on the seafront we time the install around changeover days so you do not lose a booking. We go round the finished job with you, note anything that needs adjusting, and come back once after a season of use and a winter of heating, when the timber has settled and any doors need easing.
Local
Most visitors know Paignton for the beach. These three are worth an afternoon too, and none of them needs the tide to be out.
Herbert Whitley opened his private collection to the public in 1923 as Primley Zoological Gardens, in the grounds of his house. It now covers around 80 acres of hillside and is run by the Wild Planet Trust, the charity set up after his death. The planting matters as much as the animals here, so take your time.
Learn more about Paignton Zoo on Google Maps
The old Great Western branch runs 6.7 miles from Paignton to Kingswear, past Goodrington, Churston and the halt for Greenway, then along the Dart. British Rail gave it up in 1972 and it was sold to a heritage company the same year. Steam has worked it ever since, and the station is a short walk from the seafront.
Learn more about Dartmouth Steam Railway on Google Maps
Isaac Singer, of the sewing machines, had Oldway built in the 1870s. His son Paris remodelled it between 1904 and 1907 with the Palace of Versailles in mind, adding a marble staircase with bronze balusters. The gardens are open to wander, and the colonnaded front looks faintly unreal on a grey Devon afternoon.
Learn more about Oldway Mansion on Google MapsFeedback
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.”
Budget
In Paignton the price is mostly about the house type. A kitchen in a twentieth-century semi with square walls and a level floor is the easiest work we do, so more of your money goes into the timber and less into time on site. Old Paignton costs more per metre, because breccia and cob walls take longer to fix to and sashes are made to match existing sections. On the seafront, parking can add a morning, and holiday lets often want harder-wearing finishes. Our holiday let joinery guide covers what is worth paying for.
Guide ranges only, VAT included. Your figure comes from the measured visit and the drawing you sign off.
What moves the priceQuestions
Coverage
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.
Tell us roughly what you want and which part of Paignton you are in. One of us comes round to measure and talk it over, and a scaled drawing with a fixed quote follows in the post or your inbox. No pressure to decide quickly.
