Living

The kitchen's language,carried through the house.

Wardrobes, storage and the cabinetry of the living rooms, made to measure to the same written specification as the kitchen, in the same material world. The document does not change from one room to the next. What each room asks of it does.

What does not change

The scope widened; the method did not. Each of the following is the same instrument the kitchen is built with, applied to the room beside it, and each is already written down.

One written specification

Every component named, dimensioned and described by how it behaves, complete before anything enters the workshop. A wardrobe is specified to the same completeness as a kitchen run, on the same sheet, in the same grammar.

Released from the survey, not from the drawing

Final dimensions are taken in the room after the wet trades finish, and nothing goes into manufacture until those dimensions exist. A fitted run has nowhere to hide an assumption.

The carcase standard travels

The same board, the same sealed cut edges, the same back panel grooved and glued into the sides. The reasons hold outside the kitchen: a raw edge takes on moisture wherever it is, and a pinned back racks in a wardrobe exactly as it does under a worktop.

One reveal, one line

The shadow gap is dimensioned and held to the same figure in every room. It is the detail that makes a run read as part of the building rather than as furniture standing against it.

The same division of work

The studio builds and coordinates the cabinetry. Powered fittings (interior lighting, ventilation, power and data) are supplied and connected by your own specialist, exactly as appliances are in the kitchen. What the studio owns is the structure that receives them: the recess dimensioned, the route drawn, the access left where a hand can reach it, and every position issued to the trade before first fix.

One programme

The work runs 8–10 weeks from the confirmation point: a kitchen, a dressing room, or both together, counted the same way.

What the room changes

A wardrobe is not a kitchen with different doors. Each room loads its cabinetry differently and fails differently, and the specification changes accordingly. These are the differences worth knowing before you commission any of it.

Day systems

The Media Wall

The room's quiet architecture: screen, shelf and shadow drawn as one wall.

Media walls · bookcases · home offices

What it holds

Loads that pull in opposite directions. Books are the heaviest thing most houses put on a shelf, and they load a span evenly along its whole length, the condition that produces the most deflection there is. Equipment is the opposite: concentrated weight in a single bay, generating heat while it sits there. A desk adds a third, leant on daily and served by power and data that have to arrive somewhere.

What defeats it

Span, trapped air, and positions decided too late. An unsupported shelf under a full row of books does not break; it bows, and it stays bowed. One curved shelf in a run of straight ones is the first thing an eye finds in a room. Equipment closed into a sealed bay recirculates its own warm air. An aperture cut to today's screen ages badly, because screen dimensions move and cabinetry does not. And a desk whose power was positioned after the cabinetry was built ends up with a cable run across the floor.

What the specification does

Shelf spans are dimensioned to the load they are drawn for, and the bearing specified for a full row rather than for an ornament. Equipment bays are drawn with a ventilation path in and out. Cable routes, desk height and the positions for power and data are set out on the elevations before manufacture and issued before first fix, so the specialist installing them works from the same drawing as the workshop rather than chasing a route through a finished panel afterwards. The equipment and its connection are your specialist's work; the aperture, the air path and the access are the studio's, and each carries a dimension on the sheet.

Night systems

The Dressing Room

Storage drawn to what it actually holds, measured against your wardrobe rather than a standard carcase.

Wardrobes · walk-in dressing rooms

What it holds

Hanging weight, concentrated and permanent. A full rail carries its load across a span and into its fixings, and unlike a drawer it is never unloaded. Depth is set by the shoulder of a hanger. Hanging heights are set by what is actually owned: a coat, a shirt and a folded trouser are three different dimensions, and all three are measured at survey.

What defeats it

The rail and its span, quietly. A rail that deflects under a full load does not recover, and it takes the door alignment with it. What makes it worse here is how little the room is used: a dressing room is opened a fraction as often as a kitchen drawer, so a sag that would be obvious in a kitchen within weeks goes unremarked until the doors no longer meet. The second failure is air. A closed run against an external wall swings between humid and dry as the cooling cycles, and an unsealed cut edge takes that up with every swing.

What the specification does

The rail span is dimensioned and its fixings specified for the loaded weight rather than the empty one. Hinges stay adjustable in three planes, so a run can be brought back into line long after handover instead of living with a dropped door. Shelf pitch and hanging heights come from the survey. Where interior light is wanted, the cabinetry is drawn to receive it: the recess dimensioned, the driver position left accessible without dismantling the run. The fitting itself is supplied and connected by your specialist.

Service systems

Pantry and utility

The pantry and the utility: the kitchen's discipline, carried behind the scenes.

Pantries · utility & laundry rooms

What it holds

The heaviest and the wettest work in the house, done out of sight. A utility takes standing water, a machine that vibrates against whatever carries it, and the tall stored goods a kitchen has no room for.

What defeats it

Water and vibration, and neither announces itself. A junction that was never detailed to be wet is where a utility fails, and it fails at the back of a cupboard, where it is found late. A stacked machine that is not decked works its own fixings loose as it moves.

What the specification does

This room is already published in full. The utility beside the kitchen is section 08 of the specimen specification: a coved worktop with no seam for water to sit in, an anti-vibration deck under the stacked machines, a ventilated drying bay so a closed cupboard does not become a damp one, and shelf pitch measured to the bottle and box heights taken at survey. It is written to the same completeness as the kitchen in front of it, in the same document.

Where the work meets the building

A fitted run is judged at its junctions. Walls are not flat, floors are not level, and ceilings are rarely parallel to either, so the room's own errors have to be absorbed somewhere. The drawing decides where.

The wall is not flat

Set a straight run against a real wall and the gap at one end is not the gap at the other. A fitted run carries a scribe, a component with a dimension of its own, drawn before manufacture and cut to the surveyed wall, so the junction reads as a line rather than as a gap.

The floor is not level

Every floor falls somewhere. Cabinetry levelled off the floor carries that fall up into the top of the run, where the eye reads it against the ceiling. Levelled independently, on adjustable feet behind a sealed plinth, the run stays true and the floor keeps its own error.

The ceiling is the hardest line

A tall run stopped short of the ceiling leaves a dust shelf and a shadow above it. Taken to the ceiling, it has to meet a plane that is rarely flat and rarely parallel to the floor. That is why the closing detail is dimensioned at the drawing and scribed to the surveyed room, rather than resolved at the top of a ladder on the day.

A longer run gives drift more room

Held to one figure from end to end, the reveal shows a decision. A wardrobe elevation is often the longest uninterrupted run in the house, so a millimetre of drift has more room to accumulate there than anywhere in a kitchen.

One document, both rooms

The studio publishes a complete specification: a working kitchen and the utility room beside it, in one continuous document written to the same standard throughout. The same carcase, the same reveal, the same grammar, carried across the door between them. Every line of it can be read before anything is commissioned.

Read a complete specification How each material fails

One house, one language.

Begin with the kitchen, or begin with the rooms around it. The specification is written the same way either way, and it is opened with you before anything is made.

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