The fitted furniture markets for kitchens, bedrooms, home offices and living rooms is massive and serviced by all manner of businesses from the independent carpenter or cabinet maker to large national companies at all sorts of prices and offering various levels of service.

The word bespoke is often bandied about but can only really be applied to furniture that is individually designed and made for you, this applies to the independent cabinet maker or small businesses like Options but is often incorrectly used by large companies such as Hammonds or Neville Johnson who really make standard size product in a range of fixed sizes with a limited range of door types.  These major companies will modify their standard product or make some individual components but unless the whole thing is individually specified it cannot truly be bespoke.

Having established whether your supplier is really offering custom-made furniture, the next question is “does it have backs”.  This is particularly important with bedroom furniture; see my earlier posts on avoiding mould in wardrobes.

Now find out how substantial the carcasses are, they should be made from 18 mm laminated board, not 15 mm.

If you are looking for an office or home study with bookcases, how are the bookcases built and are they designed to be self supporting rather than hanging off the wall?  Fully laden bookshelves are very heavy and can put excessive strain on an old wall or the lightweight, dry lined walls of a modern home.

Are the bookshelves adjustable. and how robust is the adjustment system? Are they deep enough to take lever arch files or vinyl albums if you have them.

Looking for a home cinema or a living room TV and audio visual unit? Is your fitted furniture manufacturer experienced in these areas? Ask to see pictures of real home installations rather than photographic studio sets. Perhaps you could arrange to visit somebody’s home to see how functional the installations are. Will the cabinet maker be able to work with, or recommend, an expert AV supplier?

Finally, ask about the guarantee. Good quality bespoke furniture should last a lifetime but insist on a minimum 10 year guarantee.  Remember guarantees are only as good as the company that issues them.  Will your supplier still be there in 8 years time? Ask for a proper insurance backed guarantee that will protect your furniture even if the manufacturer has ceased to trade.

Did you see the BBC television production Freefall?

An excellent drama highlighting the effects of the recession on three individuals: a city banker, a hardworking family man stuck with a subprime mortgage and the slimy  mortgage broker who sold it to him.

All three characters were shown as stripped down caricatures, the banker high on cocaine and bedroom action, the family man good but niave and the salesman totally amoral and able to apply his self-serving principles to whatever he was selling: sub-prime mortgages before the credit crunch and ethical home improvements after.

The types were all instantly recognizable  and plausible but seeing the salesman telling the lady of an expensive detached house how wonderful her home was and how he was appalled at people’s lack of care for the environment and how ‘I am worried for my children and terrified for my grandchildren’ before launching into a pitch for solar heating panels, rang bells for me.

The home improvement industries, including: double glazing, fitted bedrooms, sliding door wardrobes and all types of supposedly bespoke fitted furniture are riddled with them.  I have worked alongside them and competed with them and the apparent sincerity of their insincerity has amazed me.  Watch out for them because they do exist and for the untrained eye they are very hard to spot. They will offer you a super deal because they really like you and because they think you, and your wonderful home, deserve their product and for those reason they will give you a very special discount.  However, the clincher is that the sale ends tonight and if you want that new fitted office or home cinema you have to say yes now.  there is no time to waste and the price will double tomorrow.

The fact that they are denying you the right to think it over and compare the offerings from their competitors does not concern them.  Decide now or forever lose the deal.

Total nonsense, insist on your right to sleep on it and you will probably seal an even better offer on the same built-in furniture in a week’s time.

Watch out for the never ending sale

In 1978 the labour government under Prime Minister James Callaghan introduced the Sale Of Goods Act that, inter alia, attempted to put a regulatory framework around what you could and could not say about ‘Sale Discounts’. I believe that the rules still say that in order to claim that a price has been reduced you must have offered the same, or an identical item at a higher price for at least 28 days before.

Because the legislation was new and the trading standards officers were keen enforce it, furniture retailers very quickly devised ways of complying with the letter,  if not the spirit of the law. This was particularly easy for multiple retailers such as Times Furnishing and Courts who could simply offer a chest of drawers in their Brighton branch, a wardrobe in Kingston upon Thames and a dressing table in Finchley at a heavily inflated price for the statutory period and the, 28 days later retail them, individually or as a bedroom suite, across all branches at a 50% discount.

Because the markets have changed, it is now very difficult for trading standards officers to apply sanctions.  As I write, Sharps, the UK’s largest supplier of fitted wardobes and bedroom furniture has just started its umpteenth 50% off Summer Sale, replacing the half-price Spring Sale. I think that these lies damage the image of fitted furniture and other home improvement industries.

So, the first thing to establish before ordering a fitted bedroom or a home study from anybody is ‘are they telling you the truth’? Why would you trust anybody who tells you that their furniture is ‘half price’ when it is perfectly obvious that these are there normal prices and that nobody, ever, pays the ‘full price’?

Good, I’m glad I got that off my chest.  More advice on buying home improvements next week.

Isn’t this great?

June fades into July in an endless stream of warm sunny days.  Most of your sales calls are in the cool of the evening when your clients are at home. You can drive out after the rush hour has eased with the hood down on your sports car, if like me you are lucky enough to have one.

So what’s not to like? Not much , I admit.  I sometimes think that I have the perfect summer job, it’s not quite so enjoyable on a cold Novemember evening when you are looking for ‘Treetops’ or ‘The Gables’ on a private road where the houses have unlit name boards at varying heights and angles, some of them impossible to read and quite a few non existant.

Still there is a downside; even in more robust markets for bespoke fitted furniture, most home owners are thinking of barbecues, sunloungers and patio furniture rather than a fitted home office or installing new wardrobes.

So there are fewer client’s to see and the siren cry of a lawn that needs mowing is tempting me away from my computer and the interior design CAD package.

My study is in the loft space and becomes almost uninhabitable at midday during the summer months, so its a couple of hours work designing and dealing with the routine marketing issues after breakfast, a few more hours of follow up phone calls after lunch and then a salad on the patio before setting off to see Mr & Mrs Homeowner about their new bespoke living room furniture when half the population are slumped in front of their TVs trying to recover from the commute from the home counties into London and back.

Now, where did I leave the watering can?

Whether you are in the market for a loft conversion, a conservatory, fitted home office furniture, a new fitted kitchen, double glazing or fitted wardrobes it is good practice to get three competitive quotations.

possibly from one of the major companies like Hammonds,  Neville Johnson, Everest or Moben who advertise regularly in the glossy home interest magazinesor the weekend colour supplements but do look out for the ubiquitous ‘half price sale’.  These are rarely what they claim to be; Sharps bedrooms are always offered at some variation on 50% off.  Nobody ever pays the ‘full price’ for a Moben kitchen and even the interest on Sharps’ ‘interest free’ credit on fitted study furniture is paid for out of the profit on your order. Take these fake discounts with a pinch of salt.

You may wish to include a local carpenter in your quotations list. He or she will probably be cheaper than one of the major high street, home improvement companies, but do be certain to ask for references or testamonials from previous clients and try to visit and see a real furniture installation in your local area.  Otherwise you could be buying a pig-in-a-poke rather than the luxury fitted bedroom that you have been dreaming about.  Also bear in mind that a carpenter will probably do a lot of the manufacturing under your roof and be in te house for a lot longer.  Also, the local carpenter may not be able to produce a factory finish on wardrobe doors or if he buys in pre-finished doors or wardrobe carcasses he may be limited to standard sizes and not be able to produce a proper bespoke installation. Further the carpenter is unlikely to have a showroom where you can examine the product prior to purchase.

The third way is to talk to a smaller, regional fitted furniture manufacturer or double glazing supplier covering a smaller geographic are, maybe just one or two counties such as Surrey and Sussex or the whole of London and the South East. Independent fitted furniture companies such as Options are likely to to have just one or two showrooms rather than an expensive High Street presence that the retail customer always ends up paying for.  Smaller, family run bespoke cabinet makers are usual much more flexible than the bigger players and will be more willing to produce a tailor-made design to fit the dimensions of your home and achieve a better fit and cupboards that maximise the match between the space available and your storage requirements.

Take the opportunity to look at as many offerings for home improvements online as you can, choose three companies to quote, preferably one from each market sector, and take all the time you need to choose the one that is right for you and most likely make exactly what you want at a price you can afford.