Matthew Roberts Cabinet Makers was commissioned to make matching handmade wardrobes and a chest of drawers for a lovely Scandi style house in West Sussex, the brief was to keep light moving around the room and to pick up the details of another piece of furniture in the home. To make it more interesting we had a hidden doorway to the beautiful new bespoke bathroom installed by Grovesnor Landscape Technologies.

As always are first step in the design process is working out some rough sizes and scales, I call this finding the silhouette of the piece, essentially a frame work which covers the function of the piece, how much hanging space is needed, shelving etc. We can then lay the style on to this frame work, a function first approach.

Rather than the two pieces matching completely we decided to use different handle styles to be more in keeping with the eclectic furniture throughout the house, taking design and style ques from great mid-century makers as Gplan, Ercol and Eames.

The units are made Oak effect melamine faced MRD as it is such a durable, stable and cost effective finish. The handle detail, drawer fronts, side panels and tops are made of solid European oak with soft close hinges and runners, we stained and lacquered the oak to be more in keeping with the style. Both handle details were a product of some cleaver machining and tooling with the spindle moulder. The bespoke wardrobe handles needing four different passes through the machine to achieve the profile needed.

With such a beautiful oak floor running through the house we used a slightly different method of fixing the chest of drawers in place as it was to also act as a head board. In this instant we used a silicone to glue pads onto the floor and then fixed the plinth to that, silicone is very strong against sheering forces yet a thin pallet knife will remove them if the clients ever decide to move.

We love the mid-century style here and were very pleased with how these handmade wardrobes came out.

Timber- www.lathams.com

Mirror- www.shawsglass.co.uk

Ironmongery- www.isaaclord.co.uk

Bathroom www.grosvenor-lt.co.uk