Now we have three reasons for going to a fitted furniture specialist: Design Service, Product Quality and Showroom facilities.

Clearly, the carpenter should be less expensive and sometimes price comparisons will be decisive. However, there are times when price is not the only factor and you are entitled to good reasons for spending more hard-earned cash than you need to.

Today’s reason for going to to an established company of cabinet makers is the guarantee.

A fitted bedroom or home office furniture should not cost as much as your car but you will be looking at an expenditure in thousands rather than hundreds of pounds and you should expect a minimum of ten years trouble free service.

Certainly, your new living room or home cinema furniture will not be subject to the stresses and strains of the family motor but it will have moving parts and surfaces designed to withstand the wear and tear of domestic life. Servicing or replacing components such as hinges or drawer runners can be tedious and expensive.

More important, is the confidence that comes from knowing that your supplier is making and installing product designed to last.

However, a guarantee is worth nothing if the manufacturer goes out of business or, in the case of an independent tradesman, moves away or becomes unobtainable. In today’s difficult trading conditions, retailers and suppliers of domestic goods, large and small, can disapera overnight.

The best guarantee for any high ticket item is one that is backed by an insurance policy. Do not expect to have to purchase an insurance guarantee, It should be paid for by the supplier. This not only ensures that you will still benefit from the warrantee whatever happens to the insaller but also that your supplier has been checked out by the insurers. Insurance companies work hard to minimise their exposure to risk and they don’t underwrite guarantees for companies or individuals with Arthur Daley credentials.

OK, reasons to be careful: Make sure you get a proper design before hand so you can be confident the end product will match your expectations, ensure that the product quality is what you are seeking, expect to see samples of materials and finished product to benchmark the installation and insist on an insurance backed guarantee from a specialist insurer such as the Consumer Protection Association.

More to follow.

In earlier posts about buying bespoke furniture we have looked at what you gain from using the professionals rather than the less expensive carpenter and considered the benefits of using somebody with the knowledge and experience to design a bedroom, home study or home cinema furniture. We also considered the differences in the look and feel of furniture made in factory conditions and then delivered and installed, rather than constructed on-site with your home doubling as the cabinet maker’s workshop.

The next benefit to consider is being able to see examples of the finished product before you buy. Generally speaking, it is unusual for a carpenter to have a showroom, whereas it is highly unusual for a fitted furniture specialist not to have displays of installations that you can see and feel. You would not buy a second hand car unseen, or for that matter a carpet, a bathroom suite or a kitchen appliance but it never ceases to amaze me that people can ask a tradesman to build them fitted wardrobes or alcove units costing hundreds, and probably thousands of pounds, from a sketch and possibly a small sample of material.

A fitted furniture designer will usually come to an appointment with a boot full of samples in his car, but if you are dealing with a legitimate bespoke furniture company you would expect a proper showroom on the high street, a trading estate or, in the case of an independent specialist, attached to the factory or workshop.

Visiting a showroom allows you to get a feel of, not only, how the manufacturer makes its product but also the pride in the quality it offers. It helps you imagine how the product will look in your own home and, very importantly provides a benchmark with which to judge your finished installation and ensure that ‘what you see is what you get’. Metaphorically ‘kicking the tyres’ helps avoid disappointment in your purchase and should allow you to make upgrades or stipulations about how well the drawers run, the level of gloss on a lacquered finish or the exact shade of oak or walnut you expect.

Now we have three reasons for going to the professionals: Design Service, Product Quality and See Before You Buy. But that is not it, by any means. In the coming weeks I intend to give you many more reasons why the professionals are best.

OK, so whilst considering whether to use an established professional bespoke fitted furniture supplier or to save money by employing a carpenter I have cited the benefits of dealing with somebody who can supply a design service and produce technical drawings that make it clear what exactly to expect from the finished product.

The second benefit that I would to look at is the nature of the finished product: Apart from the initial design aspect and a clear understanding of your expectations, the  fitted furniture or cabinet maker will have a factory or workshop in which bench joiners (a different trade to carpentry) will prepare the doors and carcasses to precise sizes, usually within a millimetre,  and finish them ready for delivery to site and installation. The bench joinery is the messy part with wood shavings and dust that has to be extracted mechanically from the atmosphere in order to avoid health hazards. It isn’t just modern materials like mdf that carry risks, the dust from traditional hardwoods can be carcinogenic. By the time that factory made fitted furniture reaches your home it should be clean and sealed from the air.

A carpenter will normally purchase the raw materials, bring them to your house and do all the cutting,  drilling and finishing on-site. This has three effects: (1) the disruption is greater and takes much longer, perhaps a week to make a set of wardrobes as opposed to a day or two to install factory made units. (2) There will be more pollution to the atmosphere in your home, wood dust can take weeks to settle and the varnish or paint used in finishing your new furniture will be emitting solvents and adours for some time. Current legislation bans the use of air-dried finishes in factories and the new catlyst dried lacquers are virtually inert by the time they reach your home. (3) The painted or varnished finishes that can be applied by brush after the furniture is made are far less durable and abrasion resistant than sprayed on factory finishes.

Of course, you may prefer a more hand-made look to your furniture and prefer that it looks like something a carpenter has made, and at Options Fitted Furniture we do, from time to time, use various techniques to produce distressed or brush painted finishes that look hand-made whilst still retaining the hard wearing properties of modern materials.

So there you have it, the advantages of a skilled furniture designer backed up by a drawing office and a clear understanding of what you will get when it is finished  and the reduced disruption in your home coupled with the nature of the finished product are two powerful arguments for calling in the professionals.

However there is more to come and in future posts I will be looking at seeing before you buy and the project management aspects of having a new fitted bedroom, home study or living room furniture installed.

A very good question and one I was asked by a prospective new customer recently.

I had to ad lib my answer but I can’t have done too bad a job because that client has now placed a very nice order for fitted bedroom furniture.

What other choices did she have? Well, I know for a fact that she had had quotations from other fitted furniture companies and from a local carpenter. I had nothing to fear from my other mainstream competitors because, although they all claim to make bespoke furniture, I am certain that none of them have the flexibility to achieve what this client wanted. The carpenter, however was another issue.

I have no wish to disparage carpenters, and those that don’t work for us as part of the Options Furniture installation team have every right to earn a living and do, on the whole, provide a very valuable service.

However, there is one reason why my prospective client would consider using a carpenter and it is a powerful one – price! There is no reason why a carpenter, with minimal overhead, cannot make and install fitted wardrobes for considerable less money than we can.

So, why should this customer choose Options Furniture or any other professional fitted bedroom supplier rather than a carpenter?

1. The design aspect: This client has a very attractive but difficult to furnish loft conversion and really needed professional help to design a bedroom while resolving complex issues about retaining the elegant proportions of the room and providing adequate storage solutions in difficult spaces. Furthermore, she was looking for the Japanese look and I have my reservations about whether a carpenter would have the skills and experience to address these issues.The Japanese look is often achieved with sliding doors that mimic the screens that divide up traditional Japanese houses but can be interpreted in other ways.
   In the event, I was able to offer five designs that resolved the complexity of the awkward spaces, creating the Tardis effect and achieving a Japanese look in a variety of ways.

   

   Whatever his skills, it is rare to find a carpenter who can resolve storage and space problems and present those design solutions through technical drawings that the customer can interpret such that they can make the right choice and have a clear understanding of what they are going to recieve.

2. There are many other benefits of using a professional bespoke fitted furniture supplier rather than a carpenter and I will address some more of these in my next post.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was the architect who coined the phrase ‘less is more’, he was a pioneer of the minimalist movement in which the object of design was arrange the essential components of a building in such a way as to create an impression of extreme simplicity.

Today we apply van der Rohes principles to the design of bespoke fitted furniture when used in contemporary interior design to create a feeling of simplicity and space. There is still a place for traditional cabinet design using complex five piece doors with raised and fielded panels or the simpler Arts and Crafts designs, often erroneously refered to as ‘Shaker’, but more and more homemakers and interior designers are showing a preference for plainer styles of furniture that can do much to flatter the smaller living spaces of today’s high density housing.

Ornate, Victorian designs look great in spacious 19th century houses with high ceilings and large sash windows but in more restricted spaces an impression of spaciousness comes from paring things down to their basic elements. This need not imply a loss of aeshetic quality, more that the beauty is found in a simplicity of line and the inherent qualities of the  materials used. Why take a a finely coloured and textured hardwood with all the elegance that nature has gifted it,  cut it into smaller pieces, craft them and join them back together to form a whole in which we admire the craftsmanship when all we needed to enjoy was the natural beauty of the material itself?

I am speaking here of natural timbers such as oak and walnut or even more exotic woods like zebrano, but the same principles can apply to the more popular, and affordable wood effects from which bespoke fitted furniture is usually made. Do we get more pleasure from a panelled wardrobe door made to look like a hand-made hardwood door or is there as much to be appreciated in a beautiful flat door in an attractive recreation of a piece of cherry, perhaps enhanced by a simple and elegant handle?

However, some purists cannot enjoy something that purports to show the beauty of something else by copying it, this is after all what landscape painters have been doing for centuries; when you look at a Constable or a Canaletto you are not seeing the real England or Venice but a reproduction of it. If  an artificial representation of real wood does not work for you, you can take a modern material like MDF and give it a high gloss, or satin lacquered, finish and still see beauty in the lines, the choice of colour and the quality of the paintwork.

Friends of mine recently employed a professional declutterer. A WHAT? I hear you cry but yes; some people do earn their living by helping other people declutter their homes. In fact there is a whole industry out there, try googling declutter or try this website – www.apdo-uk.co.uk

My friends are delighted with the service they have received. Apparently, their declutterer helped them to decide what items needed taking to the council tip, which things to keep, how to arrange their free standing furniture to achieve the most decluttered look and what to put away.

It’s the putting away that intrigues me. Assuming that you don’t dispose of all your clothes and possessions, to achieve the objective you need storage space. Modern houses, in particular, are designed to maximise the use of expensive land and meet planning targets on density, therefore, room sizes are getting smaller and the space for storage furniture is at a premium. Creative use of bespoke furniture in difficult spaces is one solution but you will also need to maximise the use of wardrobes. Bedroom furniture with sliding doors may be one solution to achieving the Tardis Effect. The best way to an uncluttered home life is to adopt the minimalist look that is becoming so popular in interior design. Simple flat doors on wardrobes can make a room look bigger, they need less cleaning and, added bonus, cost less. Particularly popular of late are plain  high gloss doors. However, I have recently noticed a trend to plain wooden and satin lacquered doors, to get that uncluttered look simplicity is everything.

But decluttering the bedroom isn’t everything, minimalist living room furniture can create that Zen like air of tranquilty as well, and for those who work from home, an uncluttered office and a neat and tidy workspace are essential aids to productivity.

Something is happening out there. Clearly there is a nascent, if fragile,  revival in house building and the construction industry but we at Options Fitted Furniture are seeing a substantial increase in enquiries from Architectural practices.

Having recently completed a large fitted furniture contract for Oxford based McLennan architects, we are delighted that our reputation is spreading and we are finding that, in general, architects are beginning to show a greater understanding of how bespoke cabinet making differs from the traditional craft of joinery.

Joinery to the construction industry means doors, staircases and window frames. Carpentry includes the roof trusses and constructural woodwork, usually carried out on site. The Joinery contractor makes prefabricated structures that are delivered to site and joined to the building, often at the ‘first fix’ stage, such as windows, staircases and door linings. At the second fix, the carpenters will install doors and skirting boards supplied  under the joinery contract. Traditionally, this was the stage at which the carpenters would create storage spaces, such as wardrobes, from joinery components on site.

The cabinetry approach is to measure the spaces after the ‘wet trades’ or plasterers have left, make the fitted furniture off site to pre-agreeded designs in specified materials but to ’site dimensions and then deliver and install before the decorators arrive. This requires prompt site surveys, rapid factory turnarounds and skilled, fast installation to fit into the demanding schedules of the construction industry.

The end result is a better looking and more functional product for an increasingly demanding consumer, who no longer wants a piece of furniture that looks like something the builder made up as he went along, but who is not prepared to live out of the removal company’s cardboard boxes while they shop around for fitted bedroom furniture and wait the usual 6 to 8 weeks for delivery.

It has been a long time coming but architects are beginning to appreciate that bespoke fitted furniture, whilst still part of the joinery package, requires a different specifying and installation process than was the case when the new home owner would have been delighted if the new house had a 6ft wide recess in the master bedroom covered by a studwork and plasterboard fascia with a couple of pass doors.

To Norbury Park off the A24 Mickleham Bypass near Dorking.

Tucked away in the North Downs close to Denbies Vineyard, over a narrow bridge on the River Mole, up a winding single track road that seems to go on for miles lies the Norbury Park Sawmill. Sunday was their open day and I was delighted to discover this wonderful source of hand-made, solid hardwood furniture.

The sawmill and wood workshop are owned by the conversation charity Surrey Wildlife Trust. They specialise in the manufacturing of outdoor signs and furniture suitable for all occasions made from English Timbers using  are sourced from wood traditional joinery techniques.

All their timbers are sourced from woodlands managed to the Forestry Stewardship Council standards (FSC) and from within the South East of England. Their workshop waste is used to heat the workshop, as is done at Options Furniture.

All the profits from the sale of their beautiful hardwood furniture contribute towards the management of the countryside and in addition support associated woodland industries that help to preserve wildlife and traditions for future generations.

I was most impressed by a solid oak bed, although would not want to carry it upstairs, and thought some of their oak tables and chairs

were stunning. As well as the predominance of English oak in their furniture, they use many beautiful native hardwoods such as walnut, elm, yew and sweet chestnut.

We were entertained by their resident musical instrument manufacturer playing Irish and English folk music on a hand-crafted dulcimer and watched a wood turner transforming seemingly plain blocks of wood into delicate and elegant bowls which showed the beauty of burr patterns caused by coppicing and pollarding of trees, where young branches are cut off for craftwork such as hurdle making and basket weaving and to encourage regrowth.

Most of all, it was fascinating to see such self sufficient production creating beautiful craftmanship from the raw material, harvested locally and worked from the first saw cut to the finished piece all on one site.

Sadly, at Options we have to buy in our raw materials but from there through to the final installation in the clients’ homes we do add a lot of value and craft skill under one roof.

Trends in wood veneers for use in furniture come and go. Since 1960 we have had: sapele, teak, elm, ash, maple, yew, cherry and wenge but now is the age of walnut.

The common walnut and the black walnut and its allies, are important for their attractive timber, which is hard, dense, tight-grained and polishes to a very smooth finish. The colour ranges from creamy white in the sapwood to a dark chocolate colour in the heartwood. When kiln-dried, walnut wood tends toward a dull brown colour, but when air-dried can become a rich purplish-brown. Because of its colour, hardness and grain it is a prized furniture and carving wood. Walnut burls (or ‘burrs’ in Europe) are commonly used to create bowls and other turned pieces. Veneer sliced from walnut burl is one of the most valuable and highly prized by cabinet makers and prestige car manufacturers. Walnut wood has been the timber of choice for gun makers for centuries, including the Gewehr 98 and Lee Enfield rifles of the First World War. It remains one the most popular choices for rifle and shotgun stocks, and is generally considered to be the premium – as well as the most traditional – wood for gun stocks, due to its resilience to compression along the grain. Walnut is also used in lutherie, i.e. making stringed musical instruments. The wood of the Butternut and related Asian species is of much lower value, softer, coarser, less strong and heavy, and paler in colour.

In some areas of the US black walnut is the most valuable commercial timber species. In Europe, various EU-led scientific programs have studied walnut growing for timber.

Although often associated with antique furniture of the 17th and 18th centuries and laterly in Art Nouveau and Art Deco, the rich colour and grain of this beautiful wood works wonderfully well with today’s uncluttered, minimalist designs where the natural elegance of the grain needs no further embellishment.

When the Utility furniture scheme was abolished in 1952 and as we emerged from post war austerity, furniture makers looked around for new cabinet making woods to tempt a new generation of home owners with.

An early entrant was sapele, an African hardwood closely resembling mahogany. A new trend in interior design, contemporary, proved very popular with the post war generation, anxious to move on from the heavy and fussy oak and walnut bedroom and dining room suites of their parents. Much contemporary furniture began to be finished with sapele veneer, often complemented with black detail on the legs of dressing tables and living room furniture and sometimes black glass for shelves.

Very little furniture of the time was made from solid wood, chipboard was yet to arrive, so the constructural substrates were principally blockboard and plywood. Precious European hardwoods and expensively imported African timbers were valued for their beauty but were  far too valuable to be used for construction; so the ancient cabinet making craft if veneering became predominant.

‘Veneer is obtained either by “peeling” the trunk of a tree or by slicing large rectangular blocks of wood known as flitches. The appearance of the grainfigure in wood comes from slicing through the growth rings of a tree and depends upon the angle at which the wood is sliced. There are three main types of veneer-making equipment used commercially: and

• A rotary lathe in which the wood is turned against a very sharp blade and peeled off in one continuous or semi-continuous roll. Rotary-cut veneer is mainly used for plywood, as the appearance is not desirable because the veneer is cut concentric to the growth rings.
• A slicing machine in which the flitch or piece of log is raised and lowered against the blade and slices of the log are made. This yields veneer which looks like sawn pieces of wood, cut across the growth rings.
• A half-round lathe in which the log or piece of log can be turned and moved in such a way to expose the most interesting parts of the grain.

Each slicing processes gives a very distinctive type of grain, depending upon the tree species. In any of the veneer slicing methods, when the veneer is sliced, a distortion of the grain occurs. As it hits the wood, the knife blade creates a “loose” side where the cells have been opened up by the blade, and a “tight” side.

Traditionally, veneers were also sawn, but this is more wasteful of wood. Veneering is an ancient art, dating back to the ancient Egyptians who used veneers on their furniture and sarcophagi.’ (Wikipedia)

Veneering overcomes the tendency of solid hardwoods to expand, contract and distort, particularly in centrally heated environments, it reduces costs as decorative hardwoods become ever more expensive and environmentaly helpful in conserving  stocks of diminishing resources.

Meanwhile the Scandinavians were developing their own ideas in modern furniture design and teak was about to take the furniture market by storm.