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At the outset of our project we thought we would treat ourselves to bespoke wardrobes, as well as a few other bespoke pieces of furniture and cladding. With our architect's advice, we set aside £25k for all joinery items, including bespoke kitchen doors, but excluding door sets for actual rooms. This was more than a year ago. We've now started to get quotes back and I'm simply astonished at how far out we were. It's all a bit bonkers as we're not using any fancy woods, it's all vinyl wrapped MDF, oak veneer MDF or the occasional sheet of solid full stave oak panel. One joinery has told us that sheet material has gone up in price in the last 12 months by 150%; I know inflation is high, particularly in timber products, but that seems excessive. We are considering using joineries abroad (currently considering one in Portugal and one in Romania) but not sure how we would transport it back here. The obvious way to reduce costs is to cut down on the number of bespoke items and see if there are any off the shelf products we could use. I'm familiar with the IKEA range of wardrobes, and wondered whether anyone had used their carcasses, but got some nicer sliding doors from a third party manufacturer. (We need sliding as don't have room for hinged doors). Ikea's range of sliding door wardrobes is not going to work with our scheme, as although our scheme is contemporary, we want natural materials on show, and the ikea range uses vinyl wrapped mdf for almost all their doors. (We only had vinyl wrapped MDF for the internals.

I thought this might be useful for people looking for fitted wardrobes. Most of our bedrooms have wardrobes with the same doors as the our room doors, but our bedroom had a dressing room that needed fitted furniture. I see this all the time in various show homes but didn't know where to buy it. As we struggled to find it we did get quotes from a couple of people - Sharp's and someone the builder knew. These were roughly £11,000 and £10,000. I just wasn't prepared to pay this, basically it is 4 double wardrobes, 2 singles and 2 chests of drawers (I changed it to 3 when I built it). No way was I paying over £1000 per item, it is ridiculous. Anyway I had found two companies on line that allow you to order fitted furniture cut to size. I was a bit concerned about using these as I wasn't sure about the quality and particularly I was worried about getting the measurements wrong. In the end I just decided to get on with it and the builder's joiners fitted them. They look great and they cost around £6000 compared to the £10000+ quotes I had, still not cheap but a lot more reasonable. That's about £4500 for the cabinetry and then the fitting, I could have done most of it myself but simply don't have time. The company I used was https://www.diyhomefit.co.uk The other one I found was https://www.larkandlarks.co.uk The second would have been a little cheaper but I just felt better about the first and they were a little more flexible. They also had 2400mm tall wardrobes that I thought would fill the space better. It is very heavy, the drawers and wardrobe backs are all 18mm board. The handles still have to be fitted and I decided to get some kind of granite top to finish it off nicely.