Carpenter and Joiner in Coulsdon (CR5)
Coulsdon's housing runs from Victorian and Edwardian terraces to 1930s detached homes and semis, along with the protected period properties inside the conservation areas. In a house built with a chimney breast, what happens in the alcove either side of it decides how the room works.
The two gaps either side of the chimney
Alcove units look simple and are not. In an older house the two recesses are almost never the same width, the back wall is rarely flat, and the depth changes as you go up because the brickwork behind the plaster was never built to be looked at. Anything made for one alcove and copied straight into the other will show it. Built-in cupboards and shelving are measured in place, built to two different sets of dimensions, and scribed where the face meets the wall so there is no shadow gap running down the side of the unit. The existing skirting is usually returned into the cupboard rather than cut off at it, and that single detail is what makes new joinery look as though it came with the house rather than arriving later.
Period mouldings and where a room shows its age
Houses of this age were built with heavier joinery than anything sold as standard now: deep skirting, moulded architrave and, where it survives, a picture rail. New work sitting next to that has to match the profile or it reads as a patch. Where a section has been lost, a length can be matched or the profile run to suit, and short repairs spliced in rather than the whole run replaced. It is worth deciding early whether a room is being kept period or brought forward, because a half-and-half result satisfies nobody. Internal doors follow the same rule. A four-panel door in one room and a flat door in the next is the kind of thing you stop being able to ignore once you have noticed it.
Storage that has services behind it
Built-in work rarely stands on its own. A media wall wants cabling and sockets run before the face goes on, an alcove cupboard often has a meter, a stopcock or old pipework in the back of it, and boxing in needs to stay openable rather than sealing something up for good. Carpentry, boxing in and making good are our own team's work. An electrician is one of the specialists we bring in and manage ourselves, which is how first fix lands in the right week instead of after the joinery is built. All of it is planned before anything is made, because the moment to move a socket is while the wall is open, and the moment to decide on an access panel is before the unit exists rather than when somebody needs to get at the stopcock.
More in Coulsdon
Everything we do in Coulsdon is on the Coulsdon area sheet, and the full detail of how we approach this trade is on the carpentry & joinery page.
Common questions
Q.01Can you build cupboards into both alcoves so they match?
Yes, and they are made as two different units so that they look identical once they are finished. Building them to the same size is what gives the game away, because the recesses themselves are not the same.
Q.02There is a stopcock in the back of one alcove. Is that a problem?
No, but it changes the design. Anything that has to stay reachable gets a removable panel or a door in front of it rather than being built over and forgotten about.
Q.03Can you match our original skirting and architrave?
Usually. The profiles in these houses are deeper than most of what is stocked, so we either find a close match or have the section run from a sample and splice it into the existing length.
Q.04Do you build media walls with the cabling hidden?
Yes. The cables and sockets are set out and run before the face goes on, so nothing has to be cut back into a finished panel afterwards, and anything needing future access keeps it.
Thinking about carpentry & joinery in Coulsdon?
Tell us what you are planning. We come out, look at the job properly and give you a price for it.