Working With AKL
At AKL Joinery, the process is as important as the final product. We’ve perfected our approach to equally empower and inspire our clients. Your dream will come to life with an exquisite bespoke commission from AKL.
Over the years, AKL Joinery has refined a highly specific customer-focused process to successfully deliver projects. This process ensures complete clarity on next steps, timings, and how to best prioritise pending client decisions. The end product is the result of a thoughtful and measured design, evolving through a mutually enriching design process.
Preparation, Brief & Budget
The initial phase of every project begins with a detailed study of your joinery requirements. At AKL Joinery, we aim to understand your big picture from the very start. We delve into your needs, taste, style, and how you envision the space functioning, while also exploring your expectations, timescale, and budget.
This stage is typically conducted remotely via Zoom or phone, forming the foundation of the initial concept. We encourage you to share photos of the space, any measurements or drawings you have, and inspiration images to bring your vision to life.
Concept Design & Costing
From this point, we create initial sketches to bring your vision to life. These may include stylistic hand-drawn sketches, elevation line drawings, or preliminary 3D visuals. These drawings, alongside inspiration images, form the foundation of our estimate, helping you visualise both our design intent and what we have priced for.
To move forward with the next stage of design, we require either a full deposit towards the order or a non-refundable working deposit.
Technical Design
Once your deposit payment is received, we are formally instructed to proceed. At this stage, we focus on the intricate and time-intensive details essential to meeting the expectations that brought you to AKL Joinery. This commitment ensures we can deliver the exceptional quality you envision.
This phase is vital. Here, we refine concept designs, optimise layouts, and explore finishes that best align with your brief and budget. Together, we make the detailed design decisions required to expertly craft a bespoke product tailored to you.
Production
At this stage, most of our collaborative work with you is complete, and the project transitions into the manufacturing phase. Here, we maintain the highest level of discipline and precision, with one goal: to deliver excellence!
Your project is handed over to our production designer, who meticulously prepares the CNC drawings, triple-checking all design details and measurements. This process ensures absolute accuracy before producing a final set of shop drawings for manufacture.
Our skilled cabinetmakers and specialists then assemble and finish your joinery, performing a dry fit in our workshop to ensure perfection before despatch.
Installation
Two weeks before your scheduled installation, we will issue your pre-install invoice.
Once cleared, your joinery is carefully wrapped and packaged for despatch, making its journey from our factory floor to its final destination—your home, workplace, or your client’s space. With meticulous attention to detail and minimal disruption, our expert installation team will skillfully assemble and install the finished product to perfection.
Handover
Our unwavering commitment to meticulous detail continues until we are 100% satisfied with the final result. As the project nears completion, we conduct a site visit to inspect all works and prepare a schedule of any defects to address before handover.
Collaborating closely with our clients and any third-party design professionals, we ensure all expectations are met. Once the final adjustments are completed, we issue the completion invoice to conclude the process.
Aftercare
Once the installation is complete, our Installations Manager conducts a detailed inspection to ensure every aspect meets our exacting design and installation standards. For kitchens, we provide a comprehensive Operation and Maintenance (O&M) manual and offer a complimentary aftercare visit six months post-installation to ensure everything continues to meet your expectations.
We warmly welcome you to visit our workshop at any time and, in fact, we encourage it! Seeing where your joinery is crafted offers a fascinating insight into the process. During your visit, we’ll guide you through the intricacies of our machines and the various production stages.
We also keep an extensive range of samples at the workshop, so whenever possible, we recommend scheduling a design meeting there to explore the full array of options and immerse yourself in the creative process.
If you have a project in mind and want to know more about how we can help, please
contact us to arrange a consultation.
