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Bespoke fitted furniture, scribed to the room.

Wardrobes, alcove cabinetry, bookcases and oak staircases, built square in a workshop and then fitted to a house that is not square. Measured by Tom Tennant, made and fitted by his team.

Fitted furniture is furniture that cannot be moved, and that is the whole of the difference. A wardrobe you can slide away from the wall only has to look right from the front. A wardrobe built into the wall has to agree with the ceiling, the floor, the skirting and the door architrave, none of which agree with each other.

Tom Tennant works from Washington, under the South Downs, and builds fitted furniture across West Sussex.

What makes a piece “fitted” rather than furniture?

A piece of furniture is made square, because square is what makes drawers run and doors hang. A house is not square. Somewhere between those two facts is the actual work.

The answer is that the carcass stays square and the difference is taken up at the edges — in a scribe, a filler, a plinth run in on site, a cornice cut to follow a ceiling that falls away. Done properly you cannot see where it happened. Done badly it shows as a wedge of shadow at one end of a run and a bead of filler at the other.

Why is a corner the hard part?

One wall of wardrobes is a straightforward job. Two walls that meet in a corner are the job that separates fitted furniture from flat-pack. So is a run built in under a staircase, where the rake overhead sets the height of every shelf and no two are the same.

Both runs have to finish on the same line at the same height. The doors either side of the corner have to open past each other without touching. And the corner itself — the deep, awkward, easy-to-waste bit behind where the two runs meet — has to end up usable rather than sealed off behind a blank panel because it was too much trouble.

That means both runs are set out together, as one drawing, before either is made. It is not two wardrobes that happen to meet.

Fitted shelving and cupboards built into the space under a staircase, the shelves stepping down to follow the rake of the stairs above them, with flush cupboard doors along the bottom and a glass balustrade beyond. — Shelves stepped to follow the stair above them

What goes on behind the doors?

The inside is decided with you before anything is cut, because it is the part you use every day and the part nobody sees in a photograph.

Full-height hanging where coats and dresses go. Double hanging where shirts and jackets go, which doubles the capacity of the same width. Adjustable shelves rather than fixed ones. Drawers on proper runners, inside the carcass, so the fronts stay flush.

Two things are worth insisting on. The interiors are finished in the same colour as the fronts, so opening a door does not reveal a cheaper piece of furniture hiding behind a good one. And where a run goes into an eaves slope, the drawers go in the low section and the hanging goes in the tall section — the opposite of how a standard unit would be built, and the only way the low part is anything other than wasted.

The inside of a fitted run with a drop-down desk front lowered: pigeonholes and dividers behind it, a bank of small drawers alongside, and lighting set into the underside of the shelf above. — Behind the doors, with the desk front down

Why is an alcove harder than it looks?

An alcove looks like the easiest place in the house to put a cupboard. It is a hole with three walls already built. That is exactly the problem.

The two walls either side of a chimney breast are almost never parallel. The breast is almost never plumb. The back wall is almost never flat. A shelf that runs from one side to the other has to meet all three, along its whole length, with no reveal to hide in and no bead to cover the difference. It either closes or it does not, and the eye goes straight to the end that does not.

So a matched pair either side of a fireplace is not one drawing used twice. It is two units measured separately so they end up looking identical.

Painting the alcove backs a darker tone than the cabinetry is not only decoration. It stops the shelves reading as a hole punched in the wall, and it gives whatever stands on them something to stand against.

Bookcases, dressers, and the television problem

The same construction goes into the pieces that are not bedroom furniture: bookcases built to the ceiling with a moulded cornice, a dresser with a timber worktop, a window seat with a lift-up lid, a study desk built into a return.

Shelf spacing is worth a sentence. Even spacing looks tidy on a drawing and is wrong in use — the lower openings want to be deeper than the upper ones, because that is how books and objects actually sort themselves.

And then the television. It is the thing most fitted furniture pretends is not there, and it usually ends up hung on the one wall the joinery does not touch. It is a better answer to size a bay around it and carry the shelving straight over the top, so the set sits inside the piece rather than on top of it.

A painted navy bookcase and media unit built around a television: open shelving above and to both sides, a solid oak top across the middle, and panelled cupboard doors below. — The television problem, solved with a shelf around it

Painted, or oak?

Painted work suits a room that already has a lot in it — a strong floor, a fireplace, exposed timber. The frame reads as a line rather than as grain, and the colour ties the piece to the joinery that is already there.

Oak suits the opposite case, and it suits a staircase almost always, because a handrail wears into oak rather than through it. Oak also moves with the seasons. Panels are held so that they can, which is exactly why the frame is a frame and not a glued slab.

Underneath, the construction is the same either way.

What about an oak staircase?

A staircase is the one piece of joinery in a house that everybody touches every day.

Fitting one into a period stairwell is a survey job before it is a joinery job. The rise and the going are fixed by regulation and the existing opening rarely offers a clean number. Headroom under the trimmer, the position of the half landing, the depth of the floor at the top, how the newel picks up the trimmer joist — all of it is measured on site with the old flight still standing.

Then the wall string is scribed to plaster that is neither flat nor plumb, the treads are cut into it, and the balustrade is set out from the newels rather than from the wall, so the spindle spacing reads even along the whole flight.

A replacement flight in an older house is disruptive while it happens. It is planned so the stairs are usable at the end of each day wherever that can be done.

What happens before anything is cut

The survey for fitted work is a narrower thing than a kitchen survey, and a fussier one. What matters is a single opening: how far out of plumb its two sides are, whether they are out by the same amount, and how much the floor falls across the width of it. Those three numbers decide whether a run closes on the wall or arrives at it with a wedge of shadow.

Then a conversation about how the room is actually used, and what has to go inside the piece.

Nothing is made until you have seen the design twice. A written quotation follows that first visit, against a stated scope: the figure does not move unless the scope does, and anything agreed at the second visit is priced before it is made. That second visit exists only to settle the design, and only happens if you want to go ahead — it is a visit rather than a call because a piece built for one particular opening is easier to agree standing in front of it. Production starts once you are happy with the design and not before, and the piece is fitted when it is ready.

Tom measures the room and draws it. His team makes it and fits it, working from his numbers.

Getting the room ready

Fitted work usually goes into a room that is already lived in, and something is normally in the way of it — an old wardrobe, a run of shelves somebody put up, a radiator on the wall the piece wants.

Clearing it and making the wall good can be part of the job rather than something to arrange separately. It is renovation by another name, and this business does that work anyway.

Two runs of fitted wardrobes either side of a chimney breast in a bedroom, in white tongue and groove doors with black handles and hinges, with cupboards above them taken up to the ceiling. — Wardrobes either side, taken to the ceiling

Work of this kind

Fitted furniture, recently finished

A small room fitted out in bare MDF: a run of wall cupboards over a solid oak desk with an arched recess in the middle of it, open shelving filling the wall to the left, and a black-framed window to the right.

Fitted home office, Colgate

Colgate

A small room in Colgate fitted out on three walls — desk, cupboards and a shelving wall — built in MDF with a solid oak worktop, and handed over bare for the client to paint.

The finished kitchen run: pale hand-painted in-frame cabinets under a white quartz worktop, a deep butler sink beneath the window, and dark teal walls with the old timber posts and beams left exposed.

Kitchen and utility room, Pulborough

Pulborough

A kitchen and utility room designed and built on site — every unit and door made by hand in the room, the quartz worktop machine-cut in place, and the whole thing hand painted.

The finished annexe from the garden: new oak cladding beginning to silver under the old clay-tiled roof, a rooflight in the slope, with deep planting and a pergola in front of it.

Barn conversion, Pulborough

Pulborough

An old storage barn converted into a two-bedroom annexe with a bathroom: new oak cladding outside, fully insulated, and oak windows, doors, stair and floors made and fitted to a frame that was left on show.

The finished run, hand painted in soft grey-green: a full-height wardrobe at each end, a desk bay between them with an oak-toned top on two drawer pedestals, bridging cupboards above and brass knobs throughout.

Fitted wardrobes and a built-in desk, Arundel

Arundel

A wall of fitted wardrobes with a desk built into the middle of it: hanging and drawers either side, cupboards bridging over the desk, and one cornice across the lot.

A run of built-in wardrobes with dark charcoal sliding doors, the left-hand bay slid open to show two lit hanging sections, with a mirrored door and a dark door closed alongside.

Charcoal sliding-door wardrobes, Horsham

Horsham

A wall of old plank-door built-ins replaced with three sliding doors, one of them mirrored, over three bays fitted out with hanging, drawers, shelves, pull-down rails and lights.

A full-height fitted storage run across a hall wall, two tall doors in bare board with pale green panels either side of an open bay holding shelves, a timber top and a small two-door cupboard, all under a bare timber cornice on a flagstone floor.

Fitted hall storage run, Horsham

Horsham

A full-height run along one hall wall: a tall cupboard at each end with a hanging rail and shelves, and an open bay between them over a low cupboard.

Looking down from the head of the flight over the finished landing balustrade of white posts with timber caps, oak handrails and clear glass panels, with the hall floor visible below.

Glass and oak stair balustrade, Horsham

Horsham

A dark timber and metalwork balustrade replaced through the flight and the landing with white newel posts, oak rails and clear glass, and the space under the stairs fitted out.

A tall, slim shelving unit finished in a warm honey tone, standing on a bare workshop floor in front of a dust sheet, with open compartments of several different sizes and no back panel behind them.

Open shelving room divider, Horsham

Horsham

A tall, open-backed shelving unit with staggered compartments, standing out into a room to divide it without shutting the light out.

Two alcoves either side of a newly built chimney breast, each with a three-door base cupboard and two lit floating shelves above, the alcove backs painted dark blue while the cabinetry is still bare board.

False chimney breast and alcove units, Horsham

Horsham

A flat, bare wall in Horsham: a false chimney breast built to take an electric fire, and an alcove unit built into each of the two spaces that left.

A dressing room lined on two walls with full-height painted wardrobes meeting in the corner, over-boxes carried up to the cornice and recessed lights set into the plinth.

Fitted corner wardrobes, Horsham

Horsham

Two walls of full-height wardrobes turning a corner, with fitted interiors, over-boxes to the cornice and lighting set into the plinth.

The finished dresser painted deep blue with a timber worktop, four cupboards below and open shelving above, a television standing in the open centre bay, between two leaded bay windows.

TV dresser and built-in bookcase, Slinfold

Slinfold

A television dresser and a full-height bookcase for one room in Slinfold — designed and built on site in MDF and softwood, then sprayed in the room.

An oak staircase climbing to the right, square balusters under a moulded handrail, with the dark beams of an older timber frame crossing overhead.

Oak staircase and balustrade, Horsham

Horsham

An oak stair and balustrade built into a house with an exposed timber frame overhead.

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Bespoke Kitchens

Bespoke and fitted kitchens for Sussex houses: designed from a survey, built to the room's real dimensions, fitted by the team, and the room prepared first if you want it.