I have a copy of Kevin’s beautifully designed (of course) coffee table book 43 Principles of Home which, whilst a little heavy for a bedtime read is great for dipping into – I might even keep it in my beautifully designed downstairs loo – his writing is as erudite and apparently effortless as his presenting (apart from one glaring error, where he says ‘you could not do worse than, where what he means is ‘you could do worse than’, for which I blame his editors).

However, the section on toxic chemicals in your home did scare the hell out of me and almost had me running screaming from the house. Up to now my biggest concern has been a section of lead mains water pipe that I have been suspecting of poisoning me and my family for the past 30 years; that is until KMcC assured me that it will be so heavily coated with a lead-calcite lining that the deposition of lead into the drinking water is probably negligible.

However, it now appears that it’s not my water pipes that are poisoning me but my UPVC windows; which not only threaten to last forever, unless destroyed by a planet polluting  fire, but are leaching deadly toxins into the air I breath.

Similarly, my cabinet furniture, fitted and otherwise, is a source of carcinogenic formaldehyde from the chipboard and MDF used in its production. Kevin doesn’t mention the cancer causing agents in hardwoods that used to kill cabinets makers of old.

He doesn’t ask that the use of modern materials in fitted furniture production be banned or even avoided but he does strees that we sholuld ensure that as far as possible all the cut edges are covered up. Don’t use raw mdf or chipboard for shelving and preferably ensure that it is veneered, lacquered or laminated.

I thought of the ramifications of not using UPVC as a construction material, Kevin would rather that we made our houses from straw bales and timber, and reflected on my childhood in a Victorian terraced house in London. The house was cold and damp all through the winter with just a coal burning fire (more toxins) in the living room. Every couple of years Dad would sand down the window frames, no doubt releasing lead from the old paintwork, and redecorate with gloss paint that would smell for weeks while it dried slowly probably generating more pollutants. Adequate ventilation was never a problem in that draughty house but we all suffered back to back head colds through the winter.

Whether environmental health problems contributed to the cancer that ended my mother’s life at 56 I will never know. Dad made it to 89 before the emphysema from a lifetime of dedication to John Player’s Navy Cut tobacco carried him off.

I expect to outlive my father but now that I come to think of it, I will have to find something to die of. Seems to me that life is carcenagenic in one way or another and whether it’s cancer or heart disease that gets me in the end, and whether my furniture or my windows are to blame or not, I will have enjoyed the comforts that modern building materials bring to ordinary people in ordinary houses and I am unlikely to be felled by hypothermia or TB.

Like most home improvement businesses, the fitted furniture industry is subject to trends and fashions. The difficult trick for bespoke furniture manufacturers is spotting the trend and staying ahead of the curve.

Unlike the clothing inside your fitted wardrobes, the cabinetry is expected to last for decades and should come with a ten-year guarantee at the very least. The problem for the consumer is finding a range of bedroom or living room furniture that pleases today’s aeshetic but will not look dated in five years time.

What is ‘classic’, ‘traditional’, ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary’ is a subjective choice and whatever style you choose for your built-in furniture has to please you now without the propensity to look dated the next time you redecorate.

In my view, an excellent choice is plain, flat, minimalist doors in, high-gloss finish. This is a very modern look but does not offend in an older style house and has the added benefit of making rooms look bigger, is low maintainence and does not tie you into any particular style of decoration; use it with plain walls to create an open spacious effect or try it with a bold patterned wallpaper for dramatic impact.

High-gloss works well in fitted bedrooms, living rooms and on audio visual units and can be used to create a stunning contemporary home office.

High-gloss fitted furniture has been around for over decades so it looks as if it is here to stay, is not just a fashion trend and will, no doubt, still look up to date when the guarantee has long expired.

The earliest examples of high-gloss furniture were pioneered by a company called Meredew back in the 1960s and used a tough polyester finish over both light and dark wood veneers. The finish was applied using a ‘curtain-coating method in which the doors and panels were passed through a ‘waterfall’ or ‘curtain’ that poured the polyester lacquer in a technologically controlled stream that was so even that you could hardly see it moving. The whole process required a dust-free, environment and was very expensive to maintain. This process was only economical for mass production runs and did not lend itself to bespoke manufacture.

later developments in automotive finishes, using acid-caltalysed, hand sprayed lacquers have transfered into furniture manufacture and allow much greater flexibility in small batch production. It is now possible to offer a virtually unlimited range of colours and apply high-gloss to both plain mdf and wood veneers. The gloss is obtained by hand-polishing with ‘cutting pastes’, again a motor industry development.

Other types of high-gloss finish such as solid acrylics are available but are often prohibitively expensive and not as hard or scratch resistant.

At Options Furniture we have achieved some stunning high-gloss effects by spraying lacquer onto the back of glass before fixing it to the furniture; this offers the same wide choice of colours with high durability but is still expensive.

There are also some vinyl-wrapped high-gloss finishes around but the nature of vynils renders them soft and easily scratched or damaged. Also, the vinyl finish tends to dull down in a very short time and the  look is very plastic.

The latest breakthrough in high-gloss finishes has now arrived and looks very exciting; high gloss laminates. Early attempts at using high-gloss laminate on chipboard substrates were not very successful because the inherently course surface of particle board showed through the surface of the quite thin laminates. However, the second generation of  high-gloss laminates, in both wood effects and solid colours, on mdf are setting a new standard in finish quality, is tough enough for a fitted home office or study and seems set to establish the fitted furniture look for this decade.

Ask your bespoke fitted furniture designer about the new possibilities in high-gloss laminated fitted furniture.

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.

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.

I wish that most of my posessions were made from real wood; not my mobile phone or my car of course, although those half-timbered Morris Minors from the 50s are rather sweet.

Wouldn’t I love to furnish my house with with real wood furniture thoughout, but unfortunately, it is largely beyond my means.  However, I do enjoy designing real wood fitted furniture for Options’ clients and delight in seeing some of it in situ.

These photographs are just a small selection from some recent photo shoots and will soon contribute to extra pages in our photo gallery. They include wardrobes with solid walnut framed Edenbridge doors, a study with a sumtpuous walnut veneered desk that makes the most of this beautiful grain and incorporates an unusual range of walnut veneered doored cupboards and white laquered bookshelves and my f avourite, a stunning range of oak veneered bedroom furniture, with veneered interiors, bow fronted wardrobe doors and drawers, bow topped pass doors and door linings and, best of all, the detail on the doors and drawer fronts is of inset panels of pippy oak veneer.

Don’t ask the price but these three clients certainly feel that they have got real value for money. This is cabinet making of the highest order and this furniture will fulfill the adage the ‘a thing of beauty is a joy forever’.

If you are in the market for some craftsman built, bespoke, real wood furniture take a look at what options has to offer or talk to an options designer.