Alcove shelving, bookcases, cupboard and shelf combinations and fitted home offices. Floating shelves that carry real weight, library walls, and desks built into a bay, a box room or the corner of a bedroom with cable routes, drawer units and shelving over. Made to the alcove rather than bought to nearly fit, which is the whole point of having it made.
Shelves cut to the alcove and scribed to walls that are never parallel, in a thickness that will not sag once there are books on it.
The combination that actually gets used: closed storage at the bottom for the clutter, open shelving above for the things worth seeing.
Desk tops built to the right depth and height for the chair you have, with drawer units, cable routes and sockets planned in.
Fixings into whatever the wall really is, timber sized for the span, and shelving that stays straight when it is full rather than a month later.
Because alcoves are never square, never the same width top and bottom and rarely the same on both sides of a chimney breast. A bought unit leaves a gap down one side, and once you see the gap you cannot unsee it. Fitted shelving is cut to the alcove you have, scribed to the wall and finished into the skirting, and it uses the full width instead of the width the manufacturer decided on.
Not if they are specified properly, which comes down to the span, the thickness and what is going on them. A long run of books needs a thicker shelf or an intermediate support, and a shelf carrying ornaments does not. We size the timber to the span and fix into something solid, and where a run is long enough to be marginal we will tell you and give you the options rather than fitting it and hoping.
Yes, and it is one of the most common jobs we get asked for now. A desk built into the alcove or the bay, drawer units under it, shelving above and cable management through the back keeps a working setup out of the way of the rest of the room. Where the room is doubling as a guest room, we will look at how the desk sits next to a bed and design around it.
Yes, with concealed fixings so there is nothing visible under the shelf. Floating shelves need a real fixing into masonry or into properly located studs, and the depth of the shelf sets the limit on what it can carry. Deep floating shelves in a plasterboard-and-dot-and-dab wall are the one situation where we will push back and suggest a different detail.
Yes. Work can come finished from the workshop or be primed and left for your decorator, whichever suits how the room is being done. If you are decorating anyway, having the joinery in first and painting over it gives the neatest job, because the caulk lines and the wall meeting the shelving all get done in one go.
Almost none, which is the point. Alcove shelving lives in space that is already lost between the chimney breast and the wall, and a fitted desk usually takes the same footprint a free-standing one would while carrying twice the storage. The rooms where we make the biggest difference are the small ones, because that is where every wasted inch shows.
Tell us the room and roughly what you are after, and we will book a free design consultation.
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