I recently installed a fitted wardrobe and chest of drawers in a bedroom in East Lothian with a heavily coombed ceiling. The wardrobe has half-height hanging space, removable shelving in the lower half and a separate cupboard space above. Six deep drawers were used in the chest of drawers unit with generously sized shelving above for either books or clothes.
The cabinets were all made by me from oak veneered MDF panels with solid oak facings and I made the shaker-style wardrobe doors with solid oak frames and ash veneered panels. I made the dovetailed drawer boxes from solid oak with ash veneered bases and the drawer fronts were made in solid oak with recessed ash veneered panels to match the wardrobe doors. Scribing the filler panels to fit into the wide curves of the coombed ceiling was great fun. 🙂
I used Osmo White Tint (3040) throughout to subtly highlight the grain in the oak and to keep the ash pale. This colour of tint was used by me recently on the maple Nightingale furniture and I liked the effect then and I really like the effect here too – particularly in a room that is painted white with a pale coloured carpet. I sourced hardware from a variety of manufacturers: Hafele soft-close hinges for the doors; Hettich soft-close full-extension runners for the drawers; PlankHardware SWIFT swirled knobs in antique brass for the drawers and their SEARLE swirled t-bar handles in antique brass for the doors.
I was constrained in the dimensions that I could use for the furniture by the space available under the coombed ceiling and by the bedroom door: make the wardrobe taller but then the wardrobe needs to be narrower, or make the wardrobe wider but then it is less tall. To avoid hindering the wardrobe door openings I also needed to use 95 degree hinges. The final dimensions were approximately: wardrobe 900 mm wide x 1830 mm high x 580 mm deep; drawer unit 1200 mm wide x 580 mm deep with the bottom two rows of drawers each 280 mm tall and the top row 220 mm tall.
