WORKSHOP73

The client's clothes and other belongings couldn't fit in the bedroom, so storage needed to be relocated to the living room / kitchen. The design needed to function as a huge storage unit, appeal to the client's enjoyment of bright colours and striking design, as well as match the minimal sprayed white units of the kitchen.

Satin-sprayed WPB MDF. Push open cupboards & drawers. 3.5 meters wide and 2.4 meters high

Scroll down to see the internal storage when all the cupboards and drawers are open.

The bookcase is fitted against a double height wall, viewable from the downstairs living room and upstairs mezzanine office. The clients wanted it installed around an existing beam, into which we installed an LED lighting strip to illuminate the upper bookcase. We also attached a sliding ladder.

The staircase connects the first floor and new loft in a 16th Century farmhouse. The space was extremely tight considering the number of steps and the lengths of riser and tread - and the walls were very wonky! 

The stairs were made from local Herefordshire English Oak. The treads and risers were fitted exactly into routed grooves along the stringers, as the underneath of the staircase was as visible as the top.

Three full height ceiling-suspended sliding doors that glide smoothly across a 3.5 meter divide between an office space and living room. Satin-sprayed with oak trim and inset oak handle. 

Full height units at 600mm deep provided a lot of much needed storage to be taken out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. Satin-sprayed with walnut trims. 

The only way of having seats and storage in this otherwise tiny kitchen was to partially remove the wall under the stairs and install a caravan-like seating booth in its place. It was great fun to design and make and transforms the kitchen into a place to relax and entertain, rather than just standing space.

The radiator at the back wall needed to be boxed in to complete the continuous perimeter oak shelf, so grooves were routed into both the oak surface and ply side to allow air to circulate. The radiator controls are accessible through the bench storage. 

This oak veneered structure spans a 3.5m wide bedroom wall. The wall was uneven, so each piece was scribed to fit against it exactly. Sanded smooth and oiled so each join feels wonderfully smooth to the touch regardless of grain direction.

This loft conversion provided the new bedroom with two extremely deep and slightly awkward adjacent recesses. The clients needed to use the whole space for storage and a clothes rail but couldn't think how to best capitalise on the depth of the space. 

In the first, a shelf on 1.1m drawer runners was installed, that pulled out to full length. The top was lipped to stop things from falling off. The bottom had a clothes rail attached which, at the shelf's full extension, made the entire rail accessible.

In the second, a false wall brought the depth of the space forward to allow for book storage, and a cupboard door was installed in the hall outside the room to access the rest of the space. A small magnetic finger-pull hatch at the top of the shelves (just visible in the photo) gives access to the upper section of this space from the bedroom.

This cabinet was designed to house miscellaneous bits and bobs - but stored safely out of reach of curious toddlers! MDF carcass and birch ply fronts.

The mirrored sliding doors made this relatively small bathroom feel twice as large. Stretching across the 3m width of the room, the doors were extremely heavy! The cabinet itself would not hold the doors' weight, and the cistern needed to be accessible inside the cabinet - so they needed to be hung from above. The blank facade at the top of the cabinet neatly conceals the reinforced structure (spanning the walls and attached to the ceiling) from which the doors are suspended.

In this long living/dining room, the clients needed a number of different functional fitted pieces of furniture: a floating desk, a filing cabinet, a toy box and box shelving.