The story of the owner of DM Woodworking

 After leaving school I completed a four-year apprenticeship carpentry and joinery working for Trollope & Colls Ltd in their south London Joinery shop. At the same time I attended college to take City & Guilds exams. I stayed on at Trollope & Colls for another year to take the advanced exams.

I left T&C in 1976 to take up a position working for R. Harvey & sons Ltd. a small building contractor in south London. This move was done to gain experience in a different type of workshop. Here I was responsible for everything in the workshop. I would go on site and measure the jobs, go back to the shop set them out and make them from scratch. here I learned more about wood machining, the use of planers saws morticers and spindle moulders. During my time with this firm I also continued to learn more about general building and construction.

In January 1980 I started working for myself, eventually starting my own workshop facility which moved to it's present location in 1990 Over the years I have manufactured lots of different products, in hard and softwoods, in ply wood, particle board and more recently MDF. I have also a lot of experience working with Formica and other plastic laminates. 

I spent several years-making oak cabinets for lighting Control Company including helping their design team with all the original prototypes. I was also involved with their marketing dep't designing and building their exhibition stands.  During the last few years I have been making custom furniture for a company who supply language laboratory’s to schools and colleges. As you will see from the pages on this site I have made many varied items of joinery and furniture over the years and judging by the order book it seems I will be making many more.

I was for a number of years the treasurer of Edenbridge Bonfire Society involved with the committee in planing and organising a major event in the town, consisting of a torch lit procession followed by a large firework display. I was also heavily involved with the building of a number of large effigies of Guy Fawkes and other celebrity’s for the Bonfire society. 

On a personal note I have a great love of live music, I currently do the front of house sound engineering for a twelve-piece soul band. Check out their website  http://www.souldogs.co.uk/

I spent several years learning to ride horses and owned my own horse for four years. I also like traveling having visited the USA and Canada many times over the last ten years.

Purpose Made Joinery and Furniture

From our workshop in Hartfield in East Sussex we manufacture purpose made joinery and hand crafted furniture for a wide variety of people. Several local builders use us to supply all the doors and window frames that they need to match existing features or odd sizes. Other clients come to us for built in cupboards or bookshelves to fit that awkward alcove or space under the stairs. We also make canvas stretcher frames to a particular design for a local artist, so whatever your needs if it is made of wood we can probably make it.

By using the navigation bar on the left you can view some of the many projects we have undertaken over the years.

From here on, this page will change from time to time so that I can keep you up to date with what is currently going through the workshop. The cupboard doors that we made are all finished and probably installed and painted by now they can be seen on the Doors page of this site in cupboard doors

Several weeks back we made an Oak shelf for a customer which was a little out of the ordinary as It was cove shaped for a picture and more details view our other products page 

The pair of Oak display cabinets. are now finished and can be viewed here Cabinets. We recently made a reception desk for a company in London this was a slightly different job for us as we started with a mild steel frame pictured here and built the desk around the frame. 

Another set of doors in Oak, this time bi-folding between a kitchen and a new conservatory. This was the door that was in place originally ,the client decided that it would look good and be more useful opened up. 

We are currently working on a very nice kitchen . We are making all the units for the kitchen and the utility room. The cupboard fronts and end panels are being made from American Black Walnut frames with Birds Eye Maple panels. I have started a page for this kitchen as there is a lot of curved work involved it will take some weeks to complete, so I will add images as the work progresses.

Share :