Bespoke Joinery in Cockenzie & Port Seton

We’ve been fitting joinery into East Lothian houses since 1989, which on this coast mostly means we’ve already met your room and know what the salt air does to it.

George Herkes & Son Joinery has worked across East Lothian since 1989, holds East Lothian Trading Standards Trusted Trader accreditation and is rated 5.0 from 62 reviews, so the joiner in Cockenzie & Port Seton who surveys your room is the one who hands it back.

Send George the room and what you’re after and he’ll come out and measure it.

Bespoke Kitchens

We’ve been fitting kitchens in East Lothian since 1989, and what that buys you is somebody who’s already met your room. The stock here runs from stone built terraced cottages to two and three storey flats to the detached houses that went up from the 1970s onward, and they don’t ask the same questions.

We start with the services. Stack position, incoming main, meter. A waste run needs a continuous fall and on a solid floor you’ve got to find it inside the build up. Then the layout gets drawn to what the room has, not to a planner’s grid. Appliance gaps come off the appliances you’ve bought. Fillers land where you don’t look at them.

Media Walls and Storage Units in Cockenzie & Port Seton

A media wall over a working flue is a heat and cable problem before it’s a joinery one, and plenty of the older cottages here still have the flue live.

Trunking goes into the carcass at build stage with a brushed plate where the leads come through. Ventilation is left behind the panel rather than cut in afterwards with a hole saw. Fixings go into the masonry rather than the plaster, resin anchored in stone and frame fixed in block. It’s the same build as fitted wardrobes furniture in Cockenzie & Port Seton, just holding different things.

Materials, Finishes and Craftsmanship

Salt air is the thing people underestimate on this coast. It’s harder on ironmongery and on any finish that hasn’t cured properly than anything the weather does inland.

So we spray off site, flat between coats and let doors cure stacked before they come anywhere near a house. Hand painted MDF holds a crisp arris on a shaker door and stays flat. Oak and walnut take a clear lacquer where the grain’s wanted. Carcasses are eighteen millimetre board, dowelled with glue blocks at the corners. Same specification as built cupboards in Cockenzie & Port Seton.

Doors, Windows and Staircases

Linings in the older stone built cottages have been skimmed more than once, so the opening’s rarely square and never standard.

Leaves are scribed to the opening as found, hinges let in by hand, the stop reset to the closed door. Clearance is two to three millimetres at head and sides. Window profiles are taken off the existing frame as dimensions before anything’s ordered, because on a harbour elevation a new unit that doesn’t match announces itself. Stairs get balustrade spacing brought to current requirements without changing the look. It’s the same method as our bespoke joinery work in Prestonpans.

Design, Manufacture and Installation

You deal with the same people the whole way through, which is the bit that actually matters.

George measures it, George draws it, the workshop builds it and the same team fits it. Nothing’s subbed out and nothing’s handed over half done. You get a drawing back with the sizes on it before a board is cut, and you get told the sequence before the van arrives. That’s the whole arrangement and it hasn’t changed since 1989.

Fitted Wardrobes and Dressing Rooms

Bedrooms in the cottages sit partly in the roof, and the ones in the later houses off Gosford Road and Edinburgh Road don’t.

Under a slope, rails go at the high side and drawers under the low side, so the shallow end holds folded clothes rather than nothing. In a square room the run goes floor to ceiling on the wall opposite the door. The two alcoves beside a chimney breast are rarely the same depth, so we build to both and make the face frames read as one line from the doorway.

Cabinetry, Furniture and Alcove Joinery

An alcove is the highest value square metre in most of these houses and it’s usually holding a bowed shelf.

The recess gets measured at three heights, the carcass is built narrower than the smallest, and the face frame is scribed back to the plaster on site. Where a piece has to move house later it’s built as furniture instead, jointed and finished on all faces rather than scribed to one wall. That’s a decision taken at drawing stage rather than discovered at the end.