Bespoke Fitted Pantry

A bespoke pantry for a farmhouse kitchen at Newhouse Farm: two metres wide, two metres high, and built to carry real weight.

The run is four full-height cabinets, each 500mm wide and 400mm deep. Every carcass and shelf was made bespoke rather than bought in, which is what allows the unit to fill the recess exactly with no filler panels and no wasted space at the edges.

The shelves are solid throughout. Pantry shelving that sags under a stand mixer or a case of tins is the commonest failure in fitted storage, and the only cure is specifying properly at the start. Interiors are finished in a scratch and chip proof melamine, chosen because a pantry gets opened several times a day and handled with full hands.

The doors, end plates, plinth and cornice were all made to measure. The shaker doors are single-piece rather than built up, and were hand-painted in the client's chosen colour.

Oak pantry and appliance housing

Alongside it we made a bespoke oak fitted pantry, and a matching housing built to take three fridge-freezers as a single run.

Three appliances side by side is an awkward thing to get right. Left as they come they read as white goods lined up against a wall; boxed in properly, with the carcassing and the face frames made to the same dimensions and finished in the same oak, they read as one piece of furniture. The housing was built to suit the appliances rather than the appliances chosen to suit a standard carcass, which is the only way the gaps come out even.