How custom millwork is made

It starts with the room

Custom millwork is made for one space and nowhere else. A stock cabinet is designed for an ideal room with plumb walls, a level floor and square corners. Real rooms, particularly older ones, have none of those, so everything that follows depends on recording the room as it actually is.

The site measure

A proper site measure records far more than overall dimensions. We take readings at several heights because walls lean, check diagonals because corners are rarely square, and find the floor's high point because cabinets are levelled from it.

• Overall dimensions at floor, counter and ceiling height.
• Plumb and level readings on every wall the work touches.
• Positions of outlets, switches, pipes, vents and radiators.
• Window and door openings, sills and casings.
• Sections of any existing trim that new work has to match.

Shop drawings

The measurements become drawings: plans, elevations and sections that show every door, drawer, shelf, reveal and handle position at scale, with a schedule of materials and finishes. This is the stage where changes are cheap. Moving a drawer on paper costs a few minutes; moving it after it is built costs a new cabinet.

Nothing is cut until the drawings are approved. For commercial work they also go to the designer and the contractor, often with finish samples.

Milling and machining

Sheet goods are cut to size and edged. Solid timber is dimensioned: flattened, squared and planed to thickness so it stays straight. Profiles such as mouldings and door edges are run on a moulder or shaper, and where new trim has to match old, a knife is ground to the profile taken on site.

Finishing in the shop

Spraying in a shop gives a cleaner, harder and more even finish than brushing on site, because dust, temperature and curing time can be controlled. Doors and panels are finished before assembly so edges and backs are sealed as well as faces. Only fills and touch-ups are left for the room.

Dry fitting

Before anything leaves, the assembly is put together on the bench. Reveals are checked, doors are hung and adjusted, drawers are run and hardware is tested. Problems found here are solved with tools to hand, instead of in your kitchen with the counter fabricator waiting.

Installation and scribing

On site the work is levelled from the floor's high point, fixed to the structure and scribed: the edge that meets a wall is traced from the wall itself and cut to match it, so the gap disappears. Scribing is the reason a fitted piece looks built in rather than pushed against a wall.

Counters are templated once the cabinets are fixed, doors and hardware are fitted and adjusted, and the last fills and touch-ups are done in place.

Why the order matters

Each stage depends on the one before it. A careless measure produces wrong drawings, wrong drawings produce wrong parts, and wrong parts get fixed on site with filler strips and caulk. Doing the stages properly, in order, is most of what separates custom millwork from furniture that merely fits.