Alcoves either side of a chimney breast, the dead space under a staircase, a ceiling that slopes to nothing. These are the places freestanding furniture never fits and stock cabinets fill with strips. Built-ins are made to the shape instead.
The pair of alcoves either side of a chimney breast look identical and almost never are. Plaster thickness varies, the breast is rarely central, and in an older house neither back wall is flat. Build two identical units and one of them will stand proud at the front or leave a shadow gap down the side.
So each is measured on its own, at three heights, and the carcass is built to the smaller dimension with a scribe strip taken back on site to follow the actual wall. That last step is what makes a built-in look like part of the house rather than a cupboard pushed into a hole.
The same logic covers understairs runs, sloping ceilings and boxed-in pipework. All of them defeat standard sizes, and all of them are ordinary work when the boxes are made to the room. See custom cabinets, the custom hub and home office cabinetry.
Recent work
How it works
How a Built-In Is Fitted
Measure at three heights
Alcove width at the bottom, middle and top, plus depth at both sides. In an older house those six numbers are rarely the same, and the smallest of them sets the carcass.
Check what is in the wall
Old chimney breasts hide flues, and understairs voids hide pipework and meters. Better to find that before the carcass is built than while it is being screwed to the wall.
Build undersize, scribe on site
The carcass is made slightly under the opening and a scribe strip is cut back to follow the wall. That is the step that turns a cupboard into something that looks original to the house.
Paint or finish in place
Doors are finished off site, the carcass and scribes on site once fitted, so the join between cabinetry and wall disappears rather than being caulked over.
Open or closed
How Much Should Be Behind Doors
The usual arrangement is closed below and open above: cupboards to worktop height where the mess goes, shelving over it where the books and pictures go. It works because the eye reads the open half and the closed half quietly does the storing.
All-open looks lighter and asks far more of you. Every shelf becomes something to arrange and dust, and in a room off a kitchen it collects the same airborne cooking film that makes open shelving hard work. Glazed doors are the middle answer if you want the display without the upkeep.
All-closed maximises storage and can read heavy across a whole wall, which is usually solved by breaking the run rather than adding more doors. Whichever way it goes, internal fittings and soft-close hardware are designed in from the start rather than retrofitted into a carcass that was never planned for them.
Planning it
Other custom work
The Rest of What We Build
Built-ins are the same joinery outside the kitchen. These are the neighbouring jobs.
Alcoves, understairs, what goes behind doors and what it costs.
Because two alcoves in the same room are almost never the same size. Plaster varies, the chimney breast is rarely central, and the back walls are not flat. Matching units leave gaps on one side.
Building the carcass slightly undersize and cutting a strip back on site to follow the actual line of the wall. It is what makes a built-in look like part of the house rather than furniture pushed into a gap.
Yes, and it is one of the best uses of custom cabinetry. Drawers on runners work far better than a deep cupboard there, because a deep understairs cupboard swallows things and never gives them back.
Closed below and open above suits most rooms: mess behind doors, books and pictures on show. All-open looks lighter but everything on it needs dusting, more so in a room off a kitchen.
Often. Chimney breasts hide flues and understairs voids hide pipework and meters. We check before building rather than during fitting, because it can change the depth we can offer you.
They make a room work better and they read as part of the house, which is worth more to a buyer than freestanding furniture. What they will not do is fix a room with a bad layout.
By the linear foot like the rest of our cabinetry, with the complexity of the space factored in. A square alcove is straightforward; a sloping ceiling over a bowed wall is not, and the quote says so.
