Reeve & Co Interiors

Category: Blogs

  • Bespoke joinery for period and listed homes: navigating the rules

    Bespoke joinery for period and listed homes: navigating the rules

    Working in a period or listed home is a privilege and a responsibility. The joinery has to feel as though it has always been there, while quietly meeting modern expectations. Here is how we approach it.

    Match the house, not the catalogue

    Period homes have their own grammar — the depth of a skirting, the profile of an architrave, the proportions of a panelled door. We take details from what already exists and carry them through new work, so a fitted bookcase or a replacement window reads as part of the original fabric rather than an addition.

    Know where consent is needed

    In a listed building, even seemingly minor changes to joinery can require listed building consent, and conservation areas bring their own controls. We are happy to make to match approved details, but the consents themselves are a matter for you and your architect or conservation officer. It is always worth confirming before work begins — this is general guidance, not formal advice.

    Marrying old and new

    Sympathetic does not mean frozen. Concealed storage, discreet AV, better-performing windows and improved insulation can all be achieved within a traditional appearance. The craft lies in hiding the modern parts inside convincing period detail.

    Built to last another century

    We select stable timber, match grain and mouldings, and finish to a standard that will age gracefully. Good joinery in an old house should outlive all of us.

    See sympathetic work in period and country homes across our case studies, or talk to us about your project.

    Related pages

  • Bespoke timber sash and casement windows: how we make them in Suffolk

    Bespoke timber sash and casement windows: how we make them in Suffolk

    A window enquiry can arrive as a full schedule from an architect or as a handful of photographs of what is in the wall now. Either way, the same four questions decide how the finished window looks and how it behaves over thirty years: which type of window, which timber, which glazing, and what the building will allow. This is how we answer them at our workshop in Mickfield, and what to expect if you commission bespoke timber windows from us.

    Box sash or casement

    Most bespoke timber windows are one of two kinds. A box sash slides vertically in a cased frame. We build them the traditional way, with pulleys, weights and cords, or with modern spiral balances where you would rather not have the boxes. A casement is hinged: side-hung, top-hung, or a fixed light alongside opening ones. Ours are mortice-and-tenon construction, draught-stripped, and fitted with brass espagnolette furniture.

    Beyond those two we make oak mullion and gothic windows as period replicas in solid oak, with leaded or stained glass, and oriel and bay windows where the elevation calls for them. On a period house the choice is usually made by the building rather than by preference. The question is what belongs in that opening, and the answer normally comes from what was there originally.

    Choosing the timber

    Most of what decides how a timber window lasts is settled before anything is cut. These are the timbers we use for windows, and why:

    • Utile, also sold as Sipo or African mahogany. This is what we use for our frames and the most common choice on our windows and doors: strong, stable and consistent in grain, normally primed and painted.
    • Sapele. Close to mahogany, naturally resistant to decay and insect attack, and the most economical hardwood we offer. It moves more than utile through a British weather year, which is worth knowing before you specify it on a large opening.
    • Vancouver Island Douglas fir. Tight growth rings and very stable. It is a softwood, but an excellent one for windows, and it is what many of the old painted windows still in service in London were made from.
    • Oak. For mullion, gothic and other period replicas, and anywhere the timber is meant to be seen. Normally finished in an exterior oil rather than paint.
    • Accoya. Acetylated softwood that resists water, decay and movement far better than untreated timber. We prefer it for doors, and it takes paint or oil.
    • Teak. The most durable and by some distance the most expensive, increasingly hard to source, and oiled rather than painted because its natural oils will not hold paint.

    For a painted window our preference is Douglas fir, Accoya or utile. For an oiled finish, oak. The longer version, including laminated timber and thermally modified Frake, is in our guide to choosing timber for exterior doors and windows.

    Single, double or slim-light glazing

    We glaze in single, double or slim-light units. Double glazing in a timber window cuts heat loss in winter and heat gain in summer, reduces noise from a road or a flight path, and keeps the inner pane closer to room temperature, so condensation forms less readily on the frame. None of that costs you the look of the window.

    Where a conservation officer will not accept a standard sealed unit, slim-light glazing gives most of the thermal benefit within a sightline that reads correctly on a period elevation. We fit traditional glazing bars, and leaded or stained glass where the building calls for it. There is more on the trade-offs in our note on double glazing in timber windows.

    How we finish them

    Exterior joinery is only as good as its coating. Our preferred supplier for exterior paint and lacquer is Teknos. Painted windows go through AQUAPRIMER, ANTISTAIN to stop tannins in the timber bleeding through, and a TEKNOL AQUATOP topcoat. Oak that is to be oiled is finished in AQUA WOODEX. The detail of each product is in our guide to Teknos joinery finishes.

    Listed buildings and conservation areas

    A good deal of our window work is replacement on listed and locally listed buildings, where the drawing has to satisfy a conservation officer before anything reaches the bench. We build to listed-building specification and draw from photographs and survey where no original drawing exists, and our windows have been approved by conservation officers across the UK.

    What persuades an officer is usually detail rather than general arrangement: measured survey, full-size profiles taken from the original mouldings, large-scale sections through the junctions, and the timber and finish specification. Where it helps, we will run a short sample length in the proposed timber and finish to sit against the original. We also do not ask a client to commit to timber until the design is settled and any consent needed is in place. The wider picture is set out in listed buildings: where bespoke joinery meets consent, and the same care over existing fabric runs through interior work such as Albert Hall Mansions, a listed, shared building with deep window reveals.

    From schedule to fitted window

    Send us a window schedule, your architect’s drawings, the conservation officer’s notes or simply photographs. We survey, draw and price, normally within a week. Every commission is drawn twice, once in CAD and again at full size as a rod. Everything is then made at Mickfield and fitted by our own site team rather than subcontracted, which is the part that decides whether a new window looks as though it belongs in the wall.

    Our current lead time is around eight weeks, and most commissions are delivered within 16 to 20 weeks. Larger programmes, such as a full schedule on a country house or windows phased around a main contractor’s build, can run for a year or more, and we plan those around the programme rather than a single date. The four stages are set out in how a commission works.

    Where we make and fit

    Everything is made at our own joinery workshop in Suffolk, on Stonham Road, Mickfield, near Stowmarket. We fit across Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire, and regularly in London and the Home Counties; Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, Woodbridge, Colchester and Cambridge are routine journeys for us. Windows can go in alongside bespoke timber doors and panelling made in the same building, so timber and finish match from the front door inwards.

    You are welcome to see work on the bench before you commit. To talk about a window or a full schedule, call 01449 710500, send us the drawings, or look through our case studies.

  • Listed buildings: where bespoke joinery meets consent

    A great deal of super prime residential work happens in buildings that are listed, in conservation areas, or otherwise protected. Joinery is often the trade that consent turns on, because joinery is what people actually see.

    What follows is how we approach it as makers. It is not legal or planning advice: whether consent is required, and on what terms, is a matter for your local planning authority and its conservation officer, and on anything contentious we would always say take proper specialist advice before committing to a design.

    Consent is about the building, not the standard of the work

    A common misunderstanding is that beautifully made joinery will be waved through because it is beautifully made. It will not. Listed building consent is concerned with the significance of the building and the effect of the proposal on it. Excellent new work that removes historic fabric can be refused; modest work that is reversible and respects what is there is far more likely to be acceptable.

    That reframes the design question. It stops being “what would look best here” and becomes “what can be added here without diminishing what is already significant”.

    Three things that consistently help

    • Reversibility. Work that is fixed back to existing grounds, or scribed to the room rather than cut into it, is easier to justify than work that requires historic plaster or panelling to be removed.
    • Matching what is there. Where new joinery sits alongside original work, copying the existing mouldings properly — taking a profile from the original rather than picking the nearest stock cutter — is often the difference between a scheme that reads as sympathetic and one that does not.
    • Drawings that answer the question. Conservation officers are reading to understand impact. Large-scale sections through the junction between new and existing usually do more work than a general arrangement.

    What we can produce to support an application

    We are not planning consultants and we do not submit applications. What we can do is give the architect or heritage consultant the drawings and information they need: measured survey of the existing joinery, full-size profiles taken from original mouldings, large-scale details of fixings and junctions, timber and finish specifications, and a clear description of what is being added, what is being retained and what — if anything — is being removed.

    Where an officer wants to see it, we can produce a physical sample: a short length of moulding run to the proposed profile in the proposed timber and finish, set against the original. That is frequently more persuasive than another sheet of drawings.

    Where people get caught out

    The three we see most often are: assuming that internal work never needs consent, which is not a safe assumption in a listed building; designing to a scheme before anybody has spoken to the conservation officer, which can waste months; and ordering timber before consent is granted.

    The third is a commercial point rather than a planning one, but it matters. Some of the timbers used in this kind of work have long lead times and are bought as a specific parcel for a specific job. We will not commit a client to that spend until the design is settled and any consent required is in place.

    Working to what has been agreed

    Once consent is granted, the granted drawings become the specification. If something on site turns out differently from the survey — and in a period building it sometimes does — the answer is to go back through the architect and the officer rather than to make a sensible-looking decision on the bench. That discipline is a large part of why we are asked back to this kind of building.

    Before you commit to a design

    Send us the room, the existing joinery and whatever heritage information already exists for the building. We will tell you what we think can be made, how it might be fixed, and what we can produce to help your consultant make the case — and we will say plainly if we think a proposal is likely to run into trouble.

    Reeve & Co Interiors designs, draws, makes and fits bespoke joinery from its workshop at Mickfield, Suffolk. Visits to the workshop are by appointment. This article is general information, not planning or legal advice.

  • Matching period doors: how to replace a door so nobody can tell

    Matching period doors: how to replace a door so nobody can tell

    Doors are the joinery people touch every day, and in an older house they carry much of its character: the panel layout, the moulding profile, the weight of the leaf and the way it sits in the casing. When a period door has to be replaced or a run of new doors has to sit alongside originals, the aim is simple. Nobody should be able to tell which is which.

    Survey the originals properly

    Matching starts with the doors that survive. We record the panel layout, rail and stile widths, the moulding profile, whether the panels are raised, fielded or flat, how the door is hung and what ironmongery it carries. Profiles are taken off the original so the cutters can be set to match, rather than chosen from a catalogue that is nearly the same. Casings and architraves get the same treatment, because a new door in an old surround is only half the job.

    Choose the right timber

    Internal doors in period houses were usually painted softwood or, in the better rooms, a hardwood meant to be seen. For new work we choose timber for stability first — a door that moves with the seasons will never close properly — and then for how it takes the finish. Oak is the natural choice for anything that will be oiled or waxed; for external doors, durability and weathering matter as much as appearance. Our piece on oak front doors and our guide to timber for exterior doors and windows go into more detail.

    Build it like the original was built

    A door that looks right but is built differently will give itself away in time. Proper mortice-and-tenon joints, solid rails and stiles and panels free to move in their grooves are what let a door stay flat and square for decades. It is slower than building to modern shortcuts, and it is the reason the originals are still hanging.

    Listed and conservation work

    In a listed building, replacing a door is often a matter for consent, and the conservation officer will want to see that the new work matches in form, material and detail. Our listed building guide covers the consent side. At Tuddenham House in Suffolk we rebuilt door and staircase joinery after fire damage with profiles matched to the originals; at Hemmingford Park new doors were made to sit alongside restored work; and on Eaton Place in Belgravia door joinery was detailed to the period proportions of the house.

    Timescale

    Our current lead time is around eight weeks, and most commissions are delivered within 16 to 20 weeks. A single door can be quicker; a whole house of matched doors and casings is planned around the build. Everything is drawn, made, finished and hung by our own people from the workshop at Mickfield in Suffolk.

    See bespoke doors made in Suffolk, or send us a door schedule and call 01449 710500.

  • Fitted studies and private libraries: how to plan one that works

    Fitted studies and private libraries: how to plan one that works

    A fitted study is one of the most personal rooms in a house, and one of the easiest to get wrong. Buy a desk, add some shelving and a filing cabinet, and you have an office. Draw the whole room as one piece of joinery and you have a study — somewhere that works hard every day and still looks right in thirty years. These are the decisions that make the difference.

    Start with how the room is used

    Before anything is drawn, the useful questions are practical ones. Who works in the room, and for how long? Is it a working office with a screen, printer and paperwork, a private library for reading, or both? Does it need to shut away completely when guests are in the house? The answers decide where the desk goes, how much concealed storage there is, where the cables run and whether the shelving is for books or for display.

    Draw the room, not the furniture

    The studies that work best are drawn as a whole elevation rather than a set of separate pieces. Bookcases, desk, cupboards and panelling share the same plinth, cornice and shadow lines, and they are set out to the windows, the door and the fireplace so that everything lines through. We draw every study in CAD to a measured survey before any timber is cut, then scribe it on site to walls that are rarely straight. That is the difference between joinery that looks built in and furniture that looks pushed against a wall.

    The desk is furniture

    A good desk is made like a piece of furniture, not a worktop on legs: proper drawer boxes, a surface that will take years of use, and the depth and height set to the person who sits at it. Where screens and equipment are involved, cable management is planned into the carcass from the start rather than drilled through afterwards.

    Libraries need rhythm

    Shelving is the part of a study most people underestimate. Bays that are too wide sag and look mean; shelves at the wrong pitch waste space and make a library look like a shop. Proportion, bay width, the depth of the uprights and the detail at the top and bottom of each run are what make a wall of books look settled. Our piece on fitted libraries goes further into this.

    Timber and finish

    Studies suit both painted and natural timber. Painted joinery gives a calm, architectural room and suits period houses; oak and walnut bring warmth and age well in a library. Veneered panels over a stable core are often the right answer for large, flat surfaces, with solid timber for edges and mouldings. Our guide to choosing timber for bespoke joinery covers the trade-offs.

    Studies we have made

    Recent examples include a fitted library and study for a new-build house in Kent, a country-house library and panelling near Oxford, a fitted study in a Westminster home and panelled office joinery in Mayfair. As with all our work, the owners are not named — most of the people we work for value their privacy as much as the joinery.

    Timescale and next steps

    Our current lead time is around eight weeks, and most commissions are delivered within 16 to 20 weeks. Everything is drawn, made, hand-finished and fitted by our own people from the workshop at Mickfield in Suffolk, and we work throughout Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire as well as London and the Home Counties. See bespoke studies and home office furniture or read how a commission works. To talk about a room, call 01449 710500.

  • Choosing a bespoke joinery workshop in Suffolk: what to ask first

    Choosing a bespoke joinery workshop in Suffolk: what to ask first

    Suffolk has no shortage of joiners. What it has fewer of is workshops that can take a whole-house joinery package — kitchen, panelling, staircase, doors, windows and fitted furniture — draw it properly, make it to furniture standard and fit it themselves. If you are an architect, a main contractor or a private client weighing up who to trust with that work, these are the questions worth asking before anything is drawn.

    Who actually makes it?

    Plenty of firms that sell bespoke joinery buy in carcasses, doors or mouldings and assemble them. That is not necessarily wrong, but it means nobody in the building controls the whole job. Ask to see where the work is made. At our workshop at Mickfield, between Stowmarket and Debenham, everything is drawn, machined, assembled, hand-finished and fitted by our own people. When something needs resolving on site, the person looking at it is the person who made it.

    Is it drawn before it is cut?

    Good joinery is decided on paper. Every commission we take is drawn in CAD and set out to the actual room before a board is cut, so that panels, reveals, stiles and shadow gaps line through across a whole elevation rather than being fudged at the corners. For an architect that also means drawings that can be checked and signed off, not a sketch and a promise. Our note on how a commission works sets out each stage.

    Do they know their timber?

    The timber decision drives how a piece looks in twenty years, not just on the day it is fitted. For windows and external doors we use utile for most frames, sapele where budget matters and some extra movement is acceptable, oak where the timber is meant to be seen, iroko and teak oiled rather than painted, and Douglas fir where stability is the priority. Inside, the choice is as much about finish as species. A workshop that cannot explain why it is recommending one timber over another is guessing. There is more in our guide to choosing timber for bespoke joinery.

    Can they handle a listed building?

    A great deal of Suffolk’s best housing stock is listed or sits in a conservation area, and replacing a staircase, a run of panelling or a set of sash windows there is a different job from new-build work. It means matching profiles to originals, working to what the conservation officer will accept, and scribing to walls that have not been straight for three hundred years. Our work at Tuddenham House, rebuilding staircase and door joinery after fire damage, is a good example. Our listed building guide covers the consent side.

    What does the programme really look like?

    Our current lead time is around eight weeks, and most commissions are delivered within 16 to 20 weeks. Simpler pieces can be quicker; whole-house programmes and listed-building work can run for a year or more, phased around the main contractor’s build. Be wary of anyone who promises the same date for every job — the right answer depends on the drawings.

    Will they keep it quiet?

    Most of the houses we work in are private family homes, and their owners would rather nobody knew who made their joinery or where they live. That is why our case studies describe the work, the timber and the setting but leave the names out, and why you will not find us with a long list of online reviews. Discretion is part of the job. The best way to judge a workshop is to go and see it.

    One workshop, the whole house

    Because kitchens, panelling, staircases, doors, studies and libraries and fitted furniture are all made in the same building, the finishes match from room to room, and there is one point of contact rather than four trades blaming each other. For architects and contractors, trade estimates are quoted plus VAT — see working with architects and designers and working with contractors.

    We work throughout Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire, and in London and the Home Counties. Workshop visits are by appointment. Call 01449 710500.

  • Staircases as architectural centrepieces

    Staircases as architectural centrepieces

    A staircase is the one piece of joinery you see from the moment you walk in, and the one everybody touches. Get it right and it sets the tone for the whole house. It is also among the most demanding things we make.

    Timber, metal or a marriage of both

    A traditional house may call for a carved oak balustrade with turned spindles; a contemporary one for floating oak treads on a steel spine with a frameless glass balustrade. We make both, and often combine them — the warmth of timber with the slimness only steel allows.

    Engineering you do not see

    A staircase has to be beautiful and entirely safe. Behind the finish sits careful structural design: how it is supported, how the treads are fixed, how the balustrade meets Building Regulations on gaps and loading. We resolve all of this on paper before anything is made.

    Made to the millimetre

    Stairs are unforgiving of error, so we survey precisely and make to suit the actual opening. Components are finished in the workshop and installed by our own team, protecting the treads until handover.

    See staircases in oak, metal and glass across our case studies, or discuss a commission.

    Related pages

    If this is the sort of work you have in mind, there is more on how we approach bespoke studies, libraries and home office furniture — all of it drawn, made, hand-finished and fitted by our own people from the workshop at Mickfield in Suffolk.

  • Designing a boot room for a country house

    Designing a boot room for a country house

    The boot room is the hardest-working room in a country house, and one of the most satisfying to design. It has to cope with dogs, coats, wellingtons and the weather, and still look the part. A bespoke boot room solves all of that properly.

    Plan around the chaos

    Start with what actually comes through the door: outdoor coats, school bags, shooting kit, dog leads and muddy boots. Generous hanging, a bench with boot storage beneath, open cubbies and a few lockable cupboards will absorb most of family life. We plan it around your household rather than a standard template.

    Materials that earn their place

    This is not the room for delicate finishes. Hard-wearing painted joinery, a durable worktop, and a practical floor make the space forgiving. Tongue-and-groove panelling with a generous coat rail is a classic for good reason — it shrugs off knocks and looks better with age.

    The useful extras

    A dog-washing area, a drying cupboard, charging points, or a discreet utility run alongside can turn a boot room into the true working heart of the house. Planned in from the start, none of it feels bolted-on.

    See hard-wearing country-house joinery across our case studies. To talk through a boot room, contact us.

    Related pages

    If this is the sort of work you have in mind, there is more on how we approach bespoke studies, libraries and home office furniture — all of it drawn, made, hand-finished and fitted by our own people from the workshop at Mickfield in Suffolk.

  • Fitting joinery into a house somebody is living in

    Most of the joinery we fit in prime and super prime houses goes into buildings somebody is already living in. That single fact changes more about how a commission is run than any detail on the drawing.

    The programme is the constraint, not the making

    In an empty new build, joinery arrives when the building is ready for it. In an occupied house, it arrives when the household can absorb it — around school terms, around the shooting season, around a client who works from home three days a week, around a kitchen that has to keep working while the scullery beside it is stripped out.

    We would rather agree a shorter, harder window and hold it absolutely than take a generous one and drift. A fortnight that starts and finishes when we said it would is far less disruptive than three weeks that becomes five.

    What we settle before anything leaves the workshop

    • Access route. Which door, which stair, which corner. Measured, not assumed.
    • Section sizes. If a wardrobe cannot turn the half-landing in one piece, it is designed to arrive in three and read as one.
    • Protection. Floors, balustrades and the route in, before the first item is carried through.
    • Power and noise. Which operations happen on site and which go back to Mickfield.
    • Working hours. Agreed with the household and, in a mansion block, with the managing agent.

    Finishing is the part people underestimate

    Spray finishing on site in an occupied house is a negotiation with everybody else in the building — the smell, the masking, the dust, the hours where nobody else can work in that part of the house. So wherever the design allows, we finish in the workshop and fit finished.

    That pushes difficulty backwards into the making. Components must be dimensionally right first time, because there is far less scope to plane and adjust something that is already polished. It is harder for us and much easier for the client, which is the correct way round.

    Mansion blocks and estates have their own rules

    In prime central London a great deal of the work is in blocks with managing agents, porters, booked lifts, restricted delivery windows and a requirement to notify neighbours. None of that is joinery, and all of it will stop a joinery programme dead if it is discovered in week one rather than at survey.

    We ask about it early because the answer often changes the design. A dresser that cannot come up in the lift is a dresser that gets made in sections.

    Dust, and the honest version of it

    Every workshop says it is clean. What matters is what is actually done: extraction on site tools, sealed routes rather than open doors, sheeting that is fixed rather than laid, and a proper clean at the end of each day rather than at the end of the job. In an occupied house the client is inspecting the site every evening whether they mean to or not.

    One team, start to finish

    Installation is by our own fitting team. We have never sub-let it. In an occupied house that matters more than anywhere else, because the people in the building are the same people every day, they know the household, and when something needs a judgement call on site they can make it against the drawing they have already seen.

    What to send us

    Photographs of the room, the access route from the front door inwards, and a note of any fixed dates the household cannot move. From that we can tell you whether the programme you have in mind is realistic before anybody commits to it.

    Reeve & Co Interiors designs, draws, makes and fits bespoke joinery from its workshop at Mickfield, Suffolk. Visits to the workshop are by appointment.

    If this is the sort of work you have in mind, there is more on how we approach bespoke timber windows — all of it drawn, made, hand-finished and fitted by our own people from the workshop at Mickfield in Suffolk.

  • Fitted wardrobes and dressing rooms: what to expect from bespoke

    Fitted wardrobes and dressing rooms: what to expect from bespoke

    Fitted wardrobes are where bespoke quietly pays for itself. A made-to-measure run uses every inch of an awkward wall, scribes neatly to a sloping ceiling, and is finished to the same standard as the rest of the room. Here is what to expect.

    Fit comes first

    Bedrooms in older houses are rarely square. Chimney breasts, eaves and odd returns defeat modular furniture. We survey the space and make the joinery to suit it, so the wardrobes look built-in rather than bought-in — because they are.

    It is the internals that you live with

    The doors are what guests see; the internals are what you use every day. We plan hanging, shelving, drawers, shoe storage and valet rails around how you actually dress, with soft-close runners and considered lighting. A dressing room can take this further, with an island, seating and display.

    Finish and detail

    Painted, oak or walnut; handleless or with fine ironmongery; mirror-fronted or panelled to match the room — the choices are yours. We finish in the workshop and install with our own team, scribing to the building and protecting the surfaces.

    Worth doing once

    Good fitted wardrobes are a long-term investment. Built well, they outlast several redecorations and add to the feel of a considered, finished home.

    There are dressing rooms and fitted bedroom joinery throughout our case studies. To plan a room, get in touch.

    Related pages

    If this is the sort of work you have in mind, there is more on how we approach bespoke studies, libraries and home office furniture and timber wall panelling — all of it drawn, made, hand-finished and fitted by our own people from the workshop at Mickfield in Suffolk.