A fitted bedroom in Goring-on-Thames has to answer to the house it goes into, and the village has a genuinely mixed range of houses within a small area. Close to the centre there are flint and brick cottages with low ceilings and bedrooms tucked under the roof slope, while further out towards the river and the hill roads there are Victorian and Edwardian villas and larger detached houses with taller rooms and more generous proportions, some large enough to justify a proper dressing room rather than a single run of wardrobes.
The cottage bedrooms are where most of the technical challenge sits. Sloped ceilings, low eaves and walls that lean by a centimetre or two over the height of a wardrobe are the norm rather than the exception, and a carcass built to standard dimensions simply will not sit flush in that kind of room. We survey at multiple heights and design the carcass to be scribed to the actual roofline and wall angle, rather than boxing in the slope and losing headroom you could otherwise use. In the larger villas the constraints are different: bay windows, picture rails and generous skirting mean the design has to sit comfortably alongside period features rather than compete with them.
Second homes and downsizing households are common in Goring, and both tend to want fitted bedroom furniture that makes the most of a room they may be using less often but still want to feel properly finished. Our workshop at Blackbarn Farm in Ipsden is a short drive away, which keeps the survey, delivery and installation straightforward. As with any joinery touching a listed building or a conservation area property in the village, anything affecting the external appearance of the house should be checked with South Oxfordshire District Council, though internal fitted bedroom furniture rarely falls into that category.
