THE BRIEF: Bespoke joinery and the homes that resist standard sizes.
On the quiet tyranny of the alcove that isn't quite the alcove it claims to be.
There is a small but persistent lie that older homes tell their owners, and it concerns measurements.
Walk into a Victorian terrace or a Federation house and the proportions appear perfectly sensible. Symmetrical, even. Bring a tape measure into the conversation, however, and the truth emerges. The wall presumed straight has a faint curve to it, the alcove that "should" be a standard width is several centimetres narrower at the top than at the bottom, and the floor has formed its own quiet opinion about which direction constitutes level.
This is not a flaw. It is simply what happens to a building over a century or more of settling, shifting ground, and — for those along the coast — a steady diet of salt air working on every surface it touches. It is, in the most literal sense, character. It is also the precise reason that off-the-shelf joinery, however reasonably priced, tends to end in disappointment.
A bedroom in Darling Point
The clearest illustration I have encountered recently was in a Victorian terrace bedroom in Darling Point.
To be fair storage is ultimately one of the biggest requirements on a renovation checklist. My client had reached the end of her patience with what the the real estate agent had descriobed, somewhat generously, as fitted wardrobes. They were not fitted. They were standard flat-pack units, positioned against the wall and supplemented with filler panels to bridge the gap to the original skirting boards. The internal drawers had been shifted to accommodate this packing, which produced a design quirk. To open a single drawer, one was required to first open both wardrobe doors in their entirety because the packing had pushed the drawers beyond the centre point.
By the time she contacted me, she had resigned herself to the only solution she could see: removing the original Victorian fireplace to free up enough space for proper storage.
I should be transparent about where I stand on this. Removing a Victorian fireplace from a Victorian terrace is, to my mind, an act roughly equivalent to editing out the best line in a play because the stage directions were inconvenient. It was not going to happen on my watch.
What we did instead was design joinery for the alcove as it actually existed,accounting for the skirting profile, the genuine wall dimensions, and the proportions of the room rather than the proportions a factory had assumed it ought to have. I visited the finished space recently. The fireplace remains exactly where it has always been. The storage is, purposeful and increases as we were working with every available inch. Nothing original was sacrificed to achieve it.
This is, in essence, the entire argument for bespoke joinery, told through one bedroom.
On the nature of the investment
The conversation about cost is one I have in most renovations, and it is worth addressing directly rather than diplomatically.
Joinery, once installed, becomes part of the building. This distinguishes it from almost everything else in a renovation budget. A sofa, a dining table, a pendant light, all can be reconsidered at will, replaced on a whim, upgraded the moment your taste evolves or your circumstances change. Joinery that does not fit and does not function offers no such flexibility. It must eventually be removed and redone, at a cost ( which in some cases can be) considerably higher than doing it properly the first time.
My advice, when a budget is under pressure and a choice must be made between the joinery and the furniture, choose the joinery. The furniture is a decision you are permitted to revisit. The cabinetry is a decision the building will hold you to.
What "bespoke" is actually buying
Bespoke joinery is not, at its core, simply joinery that costs more. It is joinery designed for the specific dimensions, architectural detail and quiet imperfections of the room it will occupy.
This means cabinetry that can echo the original detailing in a way no mass-produced equivalent can manage. It means a wardrobe that appears to have always belonged in its alcove, rather than one that has been persuaded into it under some duress. It means kitchen joinery that responds to the actual ceiling height of the room, rather than defaulting to a standard module height and leaving a conspicuous gap above the cabinetry, as though the kitchen were still deciding how tall it wanted to be - and lets not forget collecting that delightful sticky dust underneath the unused boxed fondue set that sits in the gap.
It also means that when the walls are not quite plumb, and in a home of with some semblance of age age, they rarely are, the joinery is designed to accommodate that fact with some grace, rather than fighting it and losing.
The cost that arrives later
This conversation tends to focus on the number written on the quote in front of a client at the time. What receives considerably less attention is the number that appears later, when the off-the-shelf alternative fails to perform and must be replaced entirely.
That second figure is invariably larger. It is also entirely invisible at the moment the original decision is being made, which is precisely why it catches so many people by surprise.
After fifteen years of working in interior design, my view on this has not shifted: the joinery is worth doing properly, once. The building, and the version of you encountering it again in a decade, will both be considerably better served by it.
If you are at the early stages of a renovation and unsure where your budget should go first, The Renovation Concierge addresses exactly this. Free download via the link in bio.
Emma Stergoulis Design / The Brief