An awkward space is one where nothing you can buy will fit properly, which is the exact situation custom joinery exists for. A sloped ceiling, a chimney alcove, an under-stair void, a room with a wall that is not square: in each case the usable storage is there, it just is not a rectangle. Built-in joinery is scribed to whatever shape the space actually is, so the storage follows the room instead of fighting it.
This guide covers the awkward spaces that come up most often in Sydney homes, what can realistically be done with each, and what to check before you have someone out to measure.
What counts as an awkward space?
In practice it is any of these:
• A ceiling that slopes or rakes, so the usable height changes across the run
• A recess or alcove, usually either side of a chimney breast in an older home
• The triangular void under a staircase
• An attic or dormer conversion with low walls and a high centre
• A wall that is out of square or out of plumb, common in older and converted buildings
• A very low ceiling, where a standard wardrobe height leaves an unusable gap
• A narrow return, a corner, or a strip of wall beside a door or window
• A room with so many doors and windows that there is no clear run of wall
What they share is that the storage you can buy is made to a standard size, and the space is not. A freestanding wardrobe pushed into an alcove leaves a gap at each side and above, and the gaps are frequently as large as another shelf would have been.
Sloped and raked ceilings
The most common awkward space, and the one where the design response is most established.
The principle is to put the tallest storage where the ceiling is highest and the shallowest storage where it is lowest. In practice that usually means hanging space under the high side, drawers or shelving in the middle, and either low-level drawers or a run of low doors under the rake where a person cannot stand.
The lowest part of the rake is the part people write off, and it is the part that ends up doing the most work. A run of drawers or doors under a rake takes bedding, shoes, luggage and the things that do not need to be at eye level. Building it in is what turns dead triangular floor space into storage.
Three things to get right at the design stage:
Where the doors stop. A door under a rake has to open without hitting the ceiling, so the door height is set by the ceiling at that point, not by the height of the carcase behind it. This is worked out during design rather than on site.
Whether the top of the unit follows the rake or steps. Following the rake looks seamless and costs more in cutting and fitting. Stepping is simpler and reads as a series of units. Both are legitimate and the choice is usually aesthetic.
Head height in front of the wardrobe. You need to be able to stand in front of the hanging section. If the rake starts low enough that you cannot, the hanging section is in the wrong place.
Alcoves and chimney breast recesses
Federation homes, terraces, semis and Californian bungalows across Sydney frequently have a chimney breast with a recess on each side. Those recesses are close to ideal for built-in storage: three sides are already walls, so the joinery only has to provide a front.
Things that catch people out:
The two recesses are rarely the same size. They look symmetrical and they almost never measure symmetrically. Both get measured independently.
The walls are often not plumb. Older masonry leans slightly, so a recess can be wider at the base than the top or vice versa. This is normal joinery work and involves scribing the unit, but it does need to be known before manufacture.
Depth is fixed by the chimney breast. A recess is as deep as the chimney is proud of the wall, and that may be shallower than a hanging wardrobe needs. Where it is, the options are to run the wardrobe front proud of the chimney breast so it gains depth, to turn the hanging so garments face sideways, or to use the recess for shelving and drawers and put hanging elsewhere.
Check whether the fireplace is live. If a flue is still in use, or if a heater is installed, that changes what can be enclosed and it is a safety question rather than a design preference.
Services. Old recesses frequently carry pipework, wiring or a gas line. Worth establishing before anything is manufactured.
Under the stairs
The under-stair void is the most awkward shape in the house and the one with the most potential, because it is usually completely unused.
The workable approach is to divide it by height. The tall end near the top of the stair takes full-height storage: coats, a vacuum, an ironing board, brooms. The middle takes shelving or drawers. The low end, which nobody can reach into standing up, takes pull-out units, because a drawer that comes to you is the only way to use the back of a triangle.
Pull-out is the key idea here. A cupboard under a stair, fitted with a door and left as a void, becomes a place where things are pushed to the back and never seen again. Drawers, pull-out shelves or a pull-out unit on runners that brings the whole contents out is what makes the deep part usable.
Before you plan anything:
• Check what is already in there. Under-stair voids commonly house the meter box, the switchboard, an inspection hatch, or the only storage the house has.
• Check whether the underside is lined. An unlined stair means the joinery is going against the treads themselves.
• Check for services. Water, gas and electrical runs are frequently routed through this space.
• Consider access. A front-facing set of doors, a series of drawers, or a combination. Which works depends on how much room there is in front of the stair.
Attic and dormer conversions
An attic room has the rake problem and a second one: the walls are low, so there may be no full-height wall anywhere in the room.
The design responses are the same as any raked ceiling, with an addition. In an attic, the space behind the low wall, between the wall lining and the roof, is often accessible and often empty. Built-in storage that opens into that void, usually through low doors or drawers along the base of the wall, is the single largest storage gain available in an attic room.
Whether it is available depends on what is behind the lining, which is not something to guess at. It needs to be established before design. In some conversions that space carries insulation, ductwork or structure and is not usable.
Dormer windows create their own opportunity. The reveal on each side of a dormer is a small pocket of full-height space, and it is frequently the only full-height space in the room.
Walls that are not square
Very common in older Sydney homes and in converted buildings, and almost never a problem, provided it is known in advance.
Custom joinery deals with this by scribing: the unit is built square, and the panel that meets the wall is cut to follow the wall’s actual line. The result looks square even though the wall is not. It is ordinary work for a joiner and it is one of the clearest reasons custom joinery suits older homes better than anything you can buy.
What matters is that the measure picks it up. A wall that is out by a small amount over a short run is invisible. The same wall over three metres is a visible wedge-shaped gap if it is not accounted for.
The same applies to floors that fall, skirting boards that step, cornices that are not consistent, and ceilings that are not level. All of them are normal. All of them need measuring rather than assuming.
Low ceilings
A low ceiling is awkward in the opposite direction: there is nothing unusual about the shape, there is just not much of it.
The two decisions are whether to go to the ceiling and what to do about door heights.
Going to the ceiling is usually still right, because in a low room the gap above a standard-height wardrobe is too shallow to be useful for anything except dust. What changes is that an overhead compartment may not be worth having as a separate compartment, and a single full-height door may be the better answer.
Door height matters because a very tall door on a low ceiling can look heavy, and because a hinged door needs clearance to open. Where the ceiling is low and the room is small, narrower sections with narrower doors generally sit better than fewer wide ones.
Narrow returns, corners and strips beside doors
These are the spaces people leave empty because they are too small to be a wardrobe.
They are not too small to be storage. A narrow full-height section takes an ironing board, a clothes airer, a vacuum, long boots, a tripod, a yoga mat: the tall thin objects that otherwise lean against a wall somewhere. A strip beside a window reveal takes shelving. A corner takes a corner unit, or a pair of doors meeting at the corner with shelving behind.
Corners do need thought, because the back corner of a corner unit is difficult to reach. The usual answers are a pull-out mechanism, a rotating shelf, or accepting that the corner holds long-term storage rather than daily items.
Rooms with too many doors and windows
Not awkward in shape, awkward in what is left. Some rooms, particularly in older homes that have been extended or reconfigured, have a door, a window, a second door to an ensuite and a passage through, and no continuous run of wall anywhere.
The response is to stop looking for one wardrobe and start looking for storage in several places.
• The strip between a door architrave and a corner takes a narrow full-height unit.
• The wall under a window takes low storage or a window seat with drawers, if the sill is high enough.
• The return beside a wardrobe on the adjacent wall takes shallow shelving.
• The space above a door, which nobody uses, takes a cupboard in a room genuinely short of storage.
Individually each is small. Together they frequently exceed what a single wardrobe would have held, and they do it without blocking a doorway.
The design decision in these rooms is whether the separate elements are finished to read as one scheme or as several pieces. Matching the finish across all of them usually makes the room look calmer, even though the units are in different places doing different jobs.
Does an awkward space cost more to fit out?
Usually, and it is worth understanding where the difference comes from so you can judge whether a quote is reasonable.
The extra is in the work, not the materials. A rectangular wardrobe on a flat square wall is a standard set of cuts. A unit scribed to a raking ceiling, an out of plumb alcove or the underside of a staircase involves more measuring, more cutting to non-standard angles, more fitting on site, and more that has to be right first time because a non-standard panel cannot be swapped for a stock one.
Pull-out mechanisms, which are what make deep low spaces usable, are an added component wherever they appear.
Set against that, awkward spaces are frequently smaller than a full wall of wardrobes, so the total is not always higher even when the rate of work is. An under-stair fit-out and a three metre wardrobe wall are different jobs at different scales.
The useful comparison is not awkward against standard. It is the cost of the joinery against the cost of leaving the space empty, which in a house short of storage is usually the more expensive option.
Why built-in works better here than anything bought
In a regular rectangular room, a freestanding wardrobe and a built-in wardrobe both work, and the choice is about preference and how long you are staying.
In an awkward space, that stops being true. A standard-size unit in a non-standard space leaves gaps at the sides, above, and behind, and those gaps are not small. In an alcove they are frequently a shelf’s worth on each side. Under a rake, a rectangular unit can only be as tall as the lowest point it reaches, which means giving up everything above that line across the whole run.
Built-in joinery has no gaps because it is made to the measurement. That is the whole argument, and in an awkward space it is a large one.
What to measure and photograph before your appointment
A designer will measure properly, but the appointment goes better if the difficult parts are already identified.
• The height at both ends of any slope or rake, plus where the slope starts
• The width of an alcove at the top, the middle and the bottom, because these differ
• The depth of an alcove, and whether the chimney breast is still in use
• The full height and the full run of an under-stair void, plus anything already installed in it
• Any services you know about: meter box, switchboard, gas line, hatch
• Photographs of the whole space including the ceiling, the floor junction and any obstruction
• Whether the flooring is staying or being replaced
Take a photograph of anything you are unsure about rather than trying to describe it. The things that make a space awkward are usually the things that are hardest to put into words.
The next step
Awkward spaces are where a measured design earns its keep, because the whole point is that no standard product fits. Impressive Wardrobes offers a free measure and quote, where a designer looks at the actual shape of the space, including the parts that are difficult to work with, and designs storage around it.
Book your free measure and quote, or call (02) 9796 1022. If you would like to see finishes and fittings in person first, the showroom is at 54 Canterbury Rd, Bankstown.
