Commissions
One fixed price, agreed before any timber is cut. One person on the telephone throughout, that person being the one at the bench.
There is nothing clever about the process. It runs the same five steps whether the piece is a stool or a kitchen. The only stage that regularly takes longer than clients expect is the first, which is where mistakes are cheap.
Open
Enquiries now for delivery from May 2026. Two slots remain before the summer shutdown.
Repairs and small jobs are fitted in around the book and quoted separately.
The five steps
No charge
A conversation, and a look at the room
Send a rough size, what the piece has to do, and a photograph of the corner it has to live in. Anything fitted is measured by the workshop itself: within about forty minutes of Bristol that visit is free, and further out costs travel only.
This is also the stage at which Kelpforge declines work. If a piece would be better bought than made, or the budget and the brief are never going to meet, week one is the kind moment to say so.
£180, credited
Drawings
Pencil drawings, elevation and plan, with full-size details of whatever decides how the piece will look — a leg taper, a door rail, the curve of a plinth. A set goes out to be lived with for a fortnight. Most clients change one thing; a few change everything, which is precisely what the stage exists for.
The drawing fee is credited against the final invoice if the commission proceeds and kept if it does not. It is the only money at risk in the whole business.
Fixed figure
One quotation
Once the drawings are signed off, one figure goes out with a delivery month against it. Nothing is charged by the hour. A job that turns out harder than judged is the workshop's problem and the price stands; a brief that changes after the quotation is re-quoted in writing before work carries on.
A third holds the slot, a third falls due when the carcase or the top comes out of clamps, and the balance is paid on delivery.
4–14 weeks
Bench time
Timber is selected board by board, cut oversize, and left standing in the arch for two or three weeks to settle before it is worked to final size. Then the joinery, then the fitting, then the finish, which on shellac work is a fortnight of its own.
Clients are welcome to come and see the piece standing in the dry. Most come once, when it is together but unfinished, which is when it looks most like the drawing.
Included locally
Delivery and fitting
Delivery and placing are done by the workshop inside the BS postcodes and the nearer parts of Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, at no extra charge. Anything knocked down for the stairs is reassembled in the room and checked on the floor it will actually stand on.
Beyond that: a day rate plus mileage, or a specialist furniture carrier where the client prefers one.
Rough price bands
Excluding VAT · reviewed December 2025
These are starting figures for work in home-grown oak or ash at ordinary sizes. They are averages rather than teasers. Walnut and figured boards add roughly a fifth. Paint adds less than most people assume; carving and inlay add rather more.
| Piece | From | Typical | Bench time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Six-seat dining table | £3,400 | £3,900–£5,200 | 7–9 weeks |
| Eight to ten-seat table | £4,600 | £5,400–£7,000 | 9–12 weeks |
| Fitted alcove cupboards, pair | £2,900 | £3,400–£4,800 | 6–8 weeks |
| Sideboard or dresser | £3,800 | £4,500–£6,500 | 8–12 weeks |
| Desk with drawers | £2,600 | £3,000–£4,200 | 5–7 weeks |
| Hall bench or window seat | £1,250 | £1,500–£2,400 | 3–5 weeks |
| Stool, small table, single shelf run | £420 | £500–£1,100 | 1–3 weeks |
| Repair to solid-timber furniture | £160 | £250–£900 | By arrangement |
Delivery within the areas named above is included. A site survey further out than forty minutes from Bristol carries the travel, at cost.
Taken on
- Dining and refectory tables
- Fitted and freestanding cupboards
- Dressers, sideboards, shelving
- Benches, stools, window seats
- Desks and small library work
- Staircase parts and handrails
- Repairs to furniture that was made properly once
Declined
- Whole kitchens with appliances and worktops
- Anything built from sheet material with a wood-effect face
- Upholstery — the frame yes, the covering no
- Copies of a named designer's work
- Flat-pack expected to survive being moved twice a year
There is usually somebody in Bristol to point at instead, and the name comes with the refusal.
Small print, briefly
Every piece carries a ten-year guarantee against failure of a joint or a finish in normal indoor use. Movement with the seasons is not a fault — solid timber does that, and the designs allow for it. See Timber & Care.
Deposits are refundable up to the point the timber is cut, less the drawing fee. After that the boards have been bought for one piece and cannot go back.
Ready to start, or only testing an idea?
Either is fine. The first conversation costs nothing and tends to save a month on both sides. Recent work is the shortcut: pointing at a piece and saying what must change is the quickest brief there is.
The bench telephone is 0117 496 0138, weekdays.
Page updated 2 December 2025.