Why do you measure after plastering rather than from the plans?

Because Karen's older stone houses are comfortably twenty or thirty millimetres out of square across a run. Carcasses cut from a drawing arrive, do not fit, and get forced: which is why the doors never quite line up afterwards. We template on the wall that was actually built.

Can you deliver a full kitchen to a Karen estate?

Yes, but it needs planning. A kitchen usually arrives as a single load, and most Karen estates want the vehicle and driver registered 24 hours ahead. We arrange it at order stage rather than on the delivery morning.

Plumber in Karen, Nairobi

We cover Karen including Bogani, Hardy, Karen Centre, Miotoni, Marula Lane, Kerarapon, Karen Plains, Mokoyeti, Windridge, Kuwinda. Off Ngong Road and Langata Road via Karen roundabout. Panel deliveries need estate clearance a day ahead; a kitchen usually arrives as one load.

What is different about plumbing in Karen

Karen kitchens in the older stone houses are rarely square, so we template carcasses against the built wall rather than working from the architect's drawing.
Estate gates at Marula Lane and Kerarapon need 24 hours notice before a vehicle carrying 3m wardrobe panels is allowed onto the plot.
Half-acre Karen plots usually put the staff kitchen a long way from the main house, and clients routinely forget to include it in the joinery brief.

Kitchens and wardrobes in Karen

Karen is where we build our largest joinery. Kitchens here are generous enough for a real island, bedrooms take full-wall wardrobe runs, and there is almost always a staff kitchen and a pantry as well as the main room.

Nothing here is square

The older stone houses across Bogani, Miotoni and Karen Plains were built beautifully and not precisely. A run of wall can be out by thirty millimetres end to end, and the corners are rarely a true right angle.

That is not a defect to correct, it is a condition to build for. We survey after plastering and cut to the numbers we measure, with scribes and end panels designed in to absorb the discrepancy. A workshop that cuts from the architect’s drawing produces a kitchen that has to be forced into place, and forcing is what makes doors sit unevenly a year later.

Islands, and whether the room really takes one

Karen kitchens are among the few in Nairobi genuinely wide enough for an island with proper clearance: 900mm minimum all round, more where an appliance opens. Where a room is close to the limit we will say so and propose a peninsula instead, because an island that makes a kitchen harder to work in is a expensive mistake.

The island is usually the largest single carcass on the job, and on many Karen kitchens it has to be built in two sections simply to pass through the door.

The kitchen everyone forgets

Nearly every Karen property has a staff kitchen, and it is almost never in the brief we are first sent. It needs a hardwearing, simpler specification rather than a scaled-down version of the main kitchen, and pricing it late means it competes with finishes at exactly the wrong moment.

What we are usually called out for in Karen

Fitted kitchens Kitchens templated against your actual walls and built in our own workshop, not flat-packed. Bedroom wardrobes Built-in wardrobes that use the full wall and the full height, with internals planned around what you actually own. Kitchen islands and peninsulas Islands and peninsulas sized to real clearances, with services planned before the slab is poured. Walk-in closets Dressing rooms configured around a real inventory, with ventilation and lighting designed in.

Landmarks we work around here: Karen Shopping Centre, Karen Country Club, Ngong Racecourse, Karen Blixen Museum. See what fitted joinery costs.