23/05/2026
These fitted wardrobes were made for someone you might call a VIP of Cumbria’s interior design world – so I had to do a double good job!
Made from a rather rear timber – Olive ash. We were quite excited when we found enough of these to make all the wardrobe doors out of, and its sourced locally to boot.
Olive ash has nothing to do with an olive tree and everything to do with an ash tree that has had some kind of fungus infection of environmental stress while growing, that causes the normally quite blond timber of the ash tree, to darken and resemble a colour similar to olive wood
The design brief was to design a full wall to wall of fitted wardrobes with an oriental inspired twist that still suited a traditional Victorian/Georgian home. This led us to make the decision to use dowels in in the two middle doors where a solid panel would normally sit and upholstered panels in the side doors.
These have been designed in such a way that the panel can be removed and reupholstered as the room is redecorated.
The middle 2 door section of the wardrobe is also a little deeper than the two outer (although all still have enough depth for hanging clothes) This was to break up the wall more to stop it looking like too larger expanse of doors.
I also made for the room what I can only think to describe as a ‘vanity windowsill’. There was not room for a free standing dressing table in the room, so we decided to deepen the windowsill to make it usable as a vanity area. Buit into this is a fold up mirror.
