Chimney breast alcoves
The two alcoves are never the same width and rarely square. A pair of made-to-measure wardrobes, each built to its own opening, turns the worst storage space in the room into the best.
Services
Fitted Wardrobes, Made to Measure
Fitted wardrobes are built into the room rather than stood against it, and that is the whole difference. A fitted wardrobe uses the full height and depth you have, closes the dead space beside a chimney breast, and follows a wall that is not straight — which, in most Wiltshire houses, it is not.
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Made, not ordered
Made to measure, not made to a standard size
Buy a wardrobe from a national retailer and you are buying a size they already make. It arrives flat, goes together with cam locks, and stands against the wall with a gap behind it because your skirting is in the way. It is bedroom furniture, and it is fine.
A made-to-measure fitted wardrobe is a different thing. It is joinery: cut to the room, scribed to the wall, fixed back to the studwork, finished to the ceiling. It uses the full height of the space instead of stopping at 1.8 metres, it fills the alcove completely instead of leaving a strip of dead space, and it follows a wall that leans — which, in a Wiltshire house with any age on it, it almost certainly does.
We build them across Wiltshire and Somerset: Trowbridge, Chippenham, Melksham, Devizes, Bradford on Avon, Westbury, Frome, Bath, and out to Swindon and Salisbury. One carpenter, from the first measurement to the last screw.
Where they go
Rooms that standard wardrobes cannot solve
Almost every job we take on is one of these five. If your bedroom is a perfect rectangle with a flat ceiling, a freestanding wardrobe will serve you well and we will say so.
Sloping ceilings
Loft rooms and dormer bedrooms. The carcass is built square and the top rail cut to the pitch, so the wardrobe uses the space right up to where the ceiling comes down to meet it.
Box rooms
The small room over the stairs, where a standard 600mm carcass leaves no floor. A shallower built-in with sliding doors gives you a usable bedroom back.
Landings and awkward returns
Storage built into the dead width beside a stairwell or along a landing — usually the last unused space in a house, and often the easiest win.
Old cottages
Stone walls that bow, floors that fall away, ceilings with a beam through them. Nothing off the shelf goes in. Everything gets scribed.
Walk-in dressing rooms
A small room given over entirely to storage, or the end of a large bedroom partitioned off. Open hanging and shelving, no door fronts — often the best value per metre of anything we build.
Specification
What goes into a fitted wardrobe
The national sites will show you a finish swatch. This is the rest of it.
Carcass construction
18mm melamine-faced chipboard as standard; moisture-resistant MDF against a cold external wall; birch ply where the interior is on show. Backs are rebated into the sides rather than pinned to them, so the carcass cannot rack out of square as the house moves.
Door styles
Hinged, sliding or bi-fold. Flat slab, shaker frame, or panelled and beaded to match a period room. Mirror where a bedroom is short of light. Hinged doors are best where you have the swing; sliding where you do not.
Finishes
Spray-lacquered for a flat, hard-wearing surface; hand-painted on site when the colour has to match woodwork already in the room — Farrow & Ball and Little Greene most often. In timber: oak, ash and walnut, veneered across wide flat doors and solid in the framing.
Internals
Single and double hanging rails, adjustable shelving, drawer banks, shoe racks, trouser rails, pull-down rails for a high run, and LED lighting on a door switch. Set out around what you own — we ask what is going in before we draw anything.
Hardware
Blum and Hettich soft-close hinges and full-extension drawer runners; top-hung sliding gear rather than bottom-rolling, because it stays true and runs quieter. Handles to your choice, or a handleless push-catch.
Scribing and fixing
Scribed fillets to out-of-plumb walls, cornice cut to a ceiling that is not level, plinth cut to a floor that is not flat. Fixings into studwork or resin-anchored into masonry — never into plasterboard alone.
The process
How a fitted wardrobe gets made
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Free design visit
Alex comes to the house, measures the room properly, and asks what is going in the wardrobe. Hanging length, shoe count, whether you fold or hang your jumpers — it all changes the drawing.
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Drawing and written quote
An itemised price you can actually read, so you can see what the doors cost against the internals and decide where the money goes. Revise it as often as you like.
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Making
Carcasses and fronts made up to your measurements. Two to four weeks typically, a little longer for hand-painted work because each coat has to cure.
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Installation
One to two days on site. Floors covered, doors sheeted, and the room swept and clear at the end of each day. Doors adjusted and the whole thing handed over working, not left for you to fettle.
Recent work
Fitted joinery in real houses
Photographed on site as the jobs were, not styled in a showroom. We are building a dedicated wardrobe gallery — in the meantime, this is the same fitted joinery, in the same kind of houses.
Under-stair rebuild
An under-stair space opened up and reframed, then finished with a reclaimed panelled pine door and tongue-and-groove to match the original hallway.
Bathroom panelling
Tongue-and-groove panelling fitted around a basin and boxed cistern, scribed to walls that were nowhere near square.
Areas
Fitted wardrobes across Wiltshire and Somerset
We work out of a workshop in Trowbridge and cover both counties. Two towns have their own page, because that is where most wardrobe enquiries come from:
- Fitted wardrobes in Swindon Old Town, Rodbourne, Freshbrook, Abbey Meads and the SN postcodes
- Joinery and fitted furniture in Salisbury Including period and listed property in the city centre
Everywhere else — Trowbridge, Chippenham, Melksham, Devizes, Bradford on Avon, Westbury, Warminster, Frome, Bath — is ordinary working distance. We have recently completed jobs in Bath, Frome, Salisbury, Sherborne and just outside Devizes.
Questions
Fitted wardrobes — common questions
What is the difference between fitted and built-in wardrobes?
In practice, none — both mean a wardrobe fixed into the room rather than standing free. The useful distinction is between made-to-measure joinery, cut and scribed to your walls on site, and modular systems where standard carcasses are stood in a row and the gaps filled with trim. We make the first kind.
Can fitted wardrobes go around a chimney breast?
That is one of the best uses for them. The alcoves either side of a chimney breast are almost always different widths and rarely square, so a pair of made-to-measure wardrobes fills them properly while a standard carcass leaves a strip of wasted space at each side.
What materials do you build wardrobes from?
Carcasses in 18mm MFC or moisture-resistant MDF, birch ply where the inside will be on show. Fronts in spray-lacquered or hand-painted MDF, or in solid oak, ash or walnut. Hanging rails, soft-close hinges and drawer runners are Blum or Hettich — named brands, because that is the part you touch every day.
Do you offer a guarantee on fitted wardrobes?
Yes. The joinery and the fitting carry a written guarantee, and the hardware carries its manufacturer's own — Blum soft-close hinges, for instance, are covered for the lifetime of the mechanism.
Book a free design visit
Tell Alex the room and he will come and measure it. Free survey, free drawing, a written quote and no obligation.