Sorry, I got a bit distracted there blogging about things that caught my attention on TV and in Kevin McCloud’s book; 43 Principles of  Home. I must gt back to my theme of looking at the options for new fitted bedroom furniture or fitted wardrobes.

We discussed the DIY and flat-pack options, both of which are popular and practical as long as you  are aware of the limitations.

The third option is to consult with one or more of the professional design, build and fit companies. These are easy to find in the pages of newspaper supplements and home-interest magazines or by googling ‘fitted furniture’. This will give you the choice of about one and a half million hits!

So, how do you sort through so many websites to find the fitted furniture supplier for you? Firstly, add a regional suffix to your search criteria; such as ‘fitted furniture Surrey’. That should leave you with a managable number of around 50,000, although, you probably won’t go far beyond the 1st or 2nd page .  Or you could add a more specific prefix such as ‘bespoke’ fitted furniture.

The next thing to do is to consider what the types of hit can tell you about the companies that appear. The first three links at the top of the page and those on the right hand side are PPC or pay-per-click adverts, if you click on one of these a small sum of money, say 10p to a pound or two, will be charged to the advertiser and eventually to you the consumer.

You may then see some local ‘place’ links that are another revenue raising idea of Google’s and can be helpful if you wish to confine your search to a very localised area, remember: Google knows where you are!

The next links are the ‘organic’ or ‘generic’ listings which will take you to the websites that Google has explored and concluded that they contain information relevant to your search, arranged in descending order of relevance. These rankings are chosen by Google by objective analysis of the content but do not indicate a recommendation.

Next up: web search directories.

Before moving on from the DIY option for your new fitted bedroom furniture I would urge you to look at my post for 23 June 2010 How to avoid mould in fitted bedroom furniture and to think very seriously about putting backs on your fitted wardrobes.

The second, and less challenging, option is to look at the array of flat-packs available from stores such as Homebase and Ikea. Ikea, for example, offer excellent value for money and provided you can make their fixed door widths, of 500 mm for a hinged door and 700 mm for a slider, combined with fixed depths and heights work in your spaces, this route need not cost a lot more than the full DIY alternative and will cerainly save you a lot of mess and hastle.

Flat-pack furniture is not as robust as professionally made bespoke fitted furniture and will be far more limited in the range of styles and finishes, but for the vast majority  of home owners this is the route most often taken, if only for reasons of affordability.

People extending, improving or upgrading their homes will usually have to set themselves priorities and often the fitted bedroom will have to wait in line behind the fitted kitchen, refurbished bathroom, landscaped garden, new carpets and replacement windows. However, and unless you plan to keep your clothes in those natty cardboard storage units provided by the removal companies, you will need wardrobes in short order. The alternatives will often be the storage rails on wheels (like these) secondhand wardrobes or cheap flat-packs from the home improvement sheds.

You may not get the luxury bedroom you aspire to in the short term but the self asembly compromise should give you up to five years service, during which time you will will be able to formulate you requirements whilst saving up for the day you can afford to call in a professinal fitted furniture specialist like Options Fitted Furniture.

This time you will be spending thousands rather than hundreds of pounds and this time you need to be absolutely certain that you have made the right choices.

More on this topic next week.

On my last post I talked about how to design a fitted bedroom and considered how we might make your dream come true. The first option that I want to look at is the DIY route.

Frankly, unless you are a passionate amateur cabinet maker, I would advise buying your drawer units and bedside cabinets ready made from a shop or explore the secondhand option with a view to personalising your finds with some painting and distressing for the popular shabby chic-look.

The area where the DIY might be worth considering is the fitted wardrobes. First decide on whether you want sliding or hinged doors and have a look at what doors are available from your local home-improvement shed. Alternatively, you can find wardrobe doors by Googling; these are likely to be wood effect, vynil wrapped mdf and will probably come in standard sizes.

Having chosen your wardrobe doors, you will need to decide on the carcassing or framing. A popular do it yourself option is to make the interior shelving from laminated particle board, popular name Conti Board which some of the larger sheds or timber merchants will cut to size. This board is available in a range of sizes, up to 2 metres by 60 cm, ready edged, which is ideal for shelving and carcassing. Many of the larger DIY sheds offer a cut to length service, so I suggest that you design your wardrobe interior on paper and order your boards ready cut.

You will probably need to ’scribe’ some of the boards to fit to your walls; this is done by offering the board to the wall and using a drawing compass to to follow the line of the wall whilst marking a pencil line on the board and cutting with a jig saw. Use a down-cut jigsaw blade to acheive a neat edge from following the pencil line. Avoid cutting along the length of the board on any edge that is not going to be hidden by abutting the wall; such edges will require edging, which can be done with iron-on melamine edging, but be warned that this type of edging is not very durable and is likely to come away from the edges and is extremely brittle and prone to crack. Unfortunately, the better quality PVC edgings used by modern manufacturers of kitchen and bedroom furniture can only be applied with a multi-thousand pound edge banding machine and is not generally available to the DIY market.

Other options for the shelving or carcassing are mdf or plywood which will need painting.

I would recommend buying a good DIY manual that has a section on making your own wardrobes and be prepared for mess and upheaval lasting over several weeks.

Having designed the layout for your fitted bedroom, firstly we positioned the bed and then decided where to put the wardrobes and low level cabinets if applicable.

Now, how do we fulfill the dream? The options are: do it yourself, hire a carpenter or go to a specialist fitted bedroom supplier.

The DIY option can involve buying flat pack bedroom furniture from a major chain such as Ikea B & Q or Homebase, buying timber and raw materials from a timber merchant or seeking out a specialist bespoke furniture maker who is willing to sell you the wardrobes and cabinets on a supply only basis for you to install.

In truth, the installation cost of fitted furniture is usually only about 15% of the total price and the saving is marginal and likely to be lost completely in the event of damage during fitting or a mismeasure, both of which are costs that the professional installer would have to cover. Further, a self installation will probably annul the makers guarantee which should be for a minimum of five, and possibly ten years.

The only serious way to make serious savings as a DIY project is to buy cheaper quality, mass produced and standard sized units from a ’shed’ or to make the whole thing from scratch.

Making it all yourself can be an exciting challenge but you will need good carpentry skills, professional quality tools, including, at a minimum, a power screwdriver, a jigsaw, and a good range of hand tools.

You will also need plenty of time (an average DIY fitted bedroom project would take a minimum of two days using flat pack units and probably  ten days or more if you are making it all from raw materials), possibly spread over several weekends if you need to fit it around the day job. What else you may need is understanding neighbours and a very tolerant partner.

Next week, I will look at what materials to work with and how to set about the construction of your dream fitted bedroom.

So, we have decided where the bed is to go and on which wall to place the fitted wardrobes.

That might be enough because you may have now filled all the available space or because your choice is to have the drawers and cabinets free-standing. Perhaps you would rather not have everything to match or you prefer a few antique or distressed pieces within you design scheme.

Hovever, you may like the clean lines and lack of nooks and crannies of a modern fully fitted bedroom, or perhaps you just wish to maximise your storage whilst minimising the tidying or maintenance aspects.

You will probably need one or two bedside cabinets or, ‘night stands’ to our Amercan friends. these are often free standing, for ease of bed making, and can include one two or three drawers, an open space or a cabinet door, or a combination of any of these. Sometimes, a pull-out tea tray is added.

Many women now prefer to make up in the bathroom these days but some still like a dressing table in the bedroom, this is usually made up of two stacks of drawers with a kneehole space in between; often with a shallow drawer for make up or jewellery. This bridging drawer can have divisions and felt lining for seperate types of jewellery.

Other requirements might be: a window seat, a particularly nice option if you have a good view, and this can also provide extra storage for bulky items such as spare duvets. is usual to have a radiator under the window and this can be seen as a barrier to a window seat, but as you can see on the plans below, their are ways around this.

This is a typical design for a fitted bedroom in a south London victorian house with high ceilings and of generous proportions.

More on designing bedroom furniture next week.

The main reasons why some customers opt for sliding door wardrobes rather than hinged door fitted wardrobes are:

 (1) cost, and it is true that sliders can be cheaper, although this is often due to the simplified wardrobe interiors, without backs and sides; but if you choose budget wardrobe systems the type of door, i.e. hinged or sliding, is not a major cost factor. What is important to remember with wardrobe interiors consisting only of partitions, shelves and hanging rails fitted directly onto the walls is, apart from the aeshetics, the serious risk of condensation, leading to mould, if any part of the wardrobe is on an outside wall.

(2) Space saving and access, also partly true, but remember; to function properly a sliding door wardrobe needs to be at least 50 mm (2 inches) deeper than a hinged door installation. If the position of the wardrobe is  wardrobe is close (say 500 mm or less) to a bed you may think that a hinged door, when opened to right angle, will block your access. This would be true if all doors only opened to 90 degrees, however, there are modern, concealed hinged available that allow doors to open up to 180 degrees, effectively flattening the them against their neighbours.

There is another alternative to hinged doors and that is bi-folding doors, which combine some of the benefits if both types of wardrobe door. Like sliding doors, bi-folds run on a track system and, when closed, are almost indiscernible from conventional doors but ,when opened, they  slide and fold in pairs to reveal an opening almost twice as wide. Bi-folds work particularly when in corner installations where, like sliders, they remove the need for a corner post, or panel.

Another  disadvantage of sliding doors is that they will not work well in installations  in older houses, particularly in major cities like London, where  ceilings can be very high and clients often like to take of advantage of that ceiling height by fitting two, or even three doors above each other.

Having covered most of the issues relating to your choice of sliding door or hinged door fitted wardrobes in the last five posts I would like, at this stage, to cover some of the minor factors that people still see as key in making the decision.

Without a doubt, sliding wardrobe doors work better on longer walls than they do on short runs of 1200 mm or less and, because of the better access, four door installations upwards of 2000 mm work best. In the bedroom of a typical typical Victorian or Edwardian house in London with two alcoves either side of a chimney breast and high ceilings, sliders not only look out of character but are awkward to access.

Some people think that sliding door wardrobes do not work as well on corner installations but as can been seen in these photos, they give excellent access, particularly if both wings are 12oo mm or wider.

Another common assumption is that sliding door wardrobes do not have backs on them. This is not necessarily true and should be offered as an option by your fitted wardobe supplier. Not having backs can save you money but can prove to be a false economy, particularly if any part of the wardrobe is on an external wall, where I consider backs essential for insulation and to protect your clothes from the risk of mould inducing damp arising from contact with a cold wall.

The issue of backs or no backs also bears on another belief,  held by many, that sliding door wardrobes are easier to install. This may be the case if the wardrobe interior simply consists of shelving and hanging rails fitted directly to the wall. Although, much of the benefit in installation time can be eroded by the need to cut or ’scribe’ each shelf and partition panel to the shape of a plaster wall.

There is a potential cost saving to a sliding door wardrobe being installed without backs or carcasses but as the major cost is in the doors and tracks, the saving may not be as great as imagined.

As we have seen, there are competing arguments for both sliding and hinged door fitted wardrobes. However, it is an irrefutable fact that hinged wardrobe doors offer much more choice in terms of materials, period styles and a far broader range of prices.

Whereas the only reliable type of bespoke sliding door wardrobe consists of a decorative panel, often glass but possibly wood veneered or laminated, encased in an aluminium frame, the options on materials for hinged wardrobe doors range from:

1. Laminate, plain coloured or wood effect on particle board or mdf to provide a competitively priced, minimalist look.
2. Vinyl wrapped mdf doors, machined from a solid panel to create a look that can be simple and modern or more traditional and panelled, again plain or wood effect and with the option of high-gloss (although, in my view, the gloss look is much better on a lacqured door both for finish quality and durability).
3. Foil wrapped mdf made from five or seven seperate pre-wrapped components to give a classic hand-made look with mitred joints. Again wood effect or plain coloured.
4. Solid mdf, flat panel doors with a lacquer, or ‘paint’ finish in a range of stock or bespoke colours wiyh a matt, satin or high-gloss finish.
5. Traditional panelled doors made from mdf in styles ranging from ‘Shaker’ to ‘Raised and Fielded’ and lacquered in matt or satin. These are sometimes hand-finished or ‘distressed’ on site after installation.
6. Real wood veneered doors on an mdf substrate to give a flat minimal look, sometimes with a decorative hardwood edge
7. Finally, at the top of the price range traditional panelled doors as in 5 above but made from real hardwoods including oak, walnut, mahogany, maple, beech, ash, zebrano, cherry, wenge amongst others. Some companies will also offer pine, a softwood, but we feel that quality issues prohibits its use in this case.

The price differentials between the above door types can represent a 100% range in price of a fitted wardrobe installation from a London based company such as Options Fitted Furniture.

We have looked at comparative reliability factors, today we will consider the aeshetic design options of hinged and sliding doors on bespoke fitted wardrobes.

Perhaps the most salient design feature of the contemporary sliding door wardrobes offered by the various companies that specialise in custom-made furniture today is that the doors are almost always surrounded by an aluminium frame.  This is the culmination of years of  experimentation and evolution to overcome the reliability issues associated with sliding wardrobe doors (see last week’s post) and I would urge anybody contemplating having new wardrobes built in to be very cautious about ordering any other type of sliding door.

So; given that, for reasons of cost and reliability, the metal frames are a given, how does this affect the visual aspect of your new bedroom? In one way these doors resemble the the rice paper screens that divide up and provide access to the room spaces in the traditional houses of Japan. The Japanese look is a very popular aspiration in modern bedroom design to which this type of wardrobe is ideally suited. The effect is most readily suited to a black ‘enamel’ finish on the frames and sliding tracks; teamed with soft pastel tinted, obscure glass to give a similar appearance to the rice paper. Incidentally, the look is ‘enamel’ but the finish on the aluminium is achieved by a process know as powder coating; much harder than paint and so well bonded to the metal that, in practical terms, it is virtually indestructible.

However, sliding wardrobe doors are very modern, with or without the Japanese theme, and if used with frames of the naturally silver colour of anodised aluminium, give a very contemporary look that would work well in a London docklands apartment.

 There is of course a far wider range of styles or finishes in hinged doors and I will be looking at those possibilities in my next post.

What about the reliabilty of different types of fitted wardrobe doors?

Sliding door wardrobes do tend to have performance issues attached to them both about the mechanisms breaking down and the perception that they are inclined to come off their tracks. This perception is largely due to the widespread marketing of cheap steel framed sliding doors in the 1980s and ’90s as an affordable but fashionable new type of fitted wardrobe. These wardrobes usually had mirror panels in metal frames that clipped together in the corners and the earlier models were generally ‘top-hung’ in that the rollers were fitted to the top corners and ran un a track suspended from the ceiling. The problems largely arose from the frames coming apart at the corners under the weight of the glass panels, the lightweight roller mechanisms breaking down or the tracks pulling away from the ceiling with the effect that the doors jammed in the bottom tracks. The harrassed user, trying to dress for work would tend to force the jambed door along its track and the whole installation started to disintegrate.

The manufacturers quickly redesigned the sliding door systems to have the rollers at the bottom of the doors and to run in the bottom tracks. This acheived some improvements in the durability of the doors, which now being in compression rather than suspension were less inclined to come apart but introduced a new problem of the doors jumping out of the tracks if they so much as ran over a sock. Also the ball bearing rollers at the bottom of the doors tended to clog with fluff (common enough at the bottom of a wardrobe), with the eventual result that they ceased to revolve and again the door tended to jump or jam.

These steel framed systems are still available as prefabricated doors in the DIY sheds and can be used to make an inexpensive sliding door wardrobe but the reliability issues persist.

Subsequent advances in the design of sliding wardrobe doors using aluminium, rather than steel, frames bolted rather than clipped together at the corners and with a new generation of sealed rollers with built-in anti-jump devices have largely eliminated the reliability issues and modern bespoke fitted furniture with sliding doors are no more likely to suffer from jamming or jumping than a hinged door is likely to come off a wardrobe carcass.

However sliders do have more complex mechanical systems than hinges and the opportunities for failure are therefore greater. Having said that, I recently revisited a development of apartments in Shad Thames, London and was delighted to see that some aluminium framed sliding doors we installed when the block was built almost 20 years ago were still performing well.

Today we have looked at the comparative reliability of sliding or hinged doors. Next week we consider different design options.