Bespoke furniture and joinery within a wider build or renovation programme

On most projects Chester Thomas is one of several trades working to a single build programme, and a builder or main contractor is usually responsible for the sequence everyone else works within. Our role is to design, manufacture and install bespoke furniture and joinery that fits correctly into the openings, services positions and finishes the build has already established, without holding up the trades around us.

We are a furniture and joinery specialist, not a construction company. We do not carry out groundworks, structural alterations, electrical, plumbing or gas work, and any project that needs those services should have its own qualified trades in place. Where our furniture depends on that work being complete — a socket position, a stud wall, a finished floor level — we ask for confirmation before manufacture rather than assuming it will be ready by the time we arrive on site.

Coordinating with a builder's programme is largely a matter of good information passing in both directions. We need to know when a room will genuinely be ready for installation, and a builder needs to know what our furniture depends on well before that date, so neither side is caught out by a mismatch between a schedule and the real state of the site.

Every project runs to its own sequence, and the detail of that coordination varies with the scope of the build. What stays constant is our own scope: we design, manufacture and install the furniture and joinery, and we work around the rest of the build programme rather than trying to direct it.

Chester Thomas designs, manufactures and installs bespoke furniture and joinery. We do not carry out construction, structural alterations, electrical, plumbing or gas work, and we do not take responsibility for those elements of a project even where our furniture depends on them being completed correctly. Where specialist work of this kind is needed, it should sit with the builder's own trades or appropriate specialists.

This division of responsibility is not a formality. Fitted furniture is manufactured to fixed dimensions and fixed service positions, so any error in the underlying construction, wiring or plumbing tends to surface once our furniture is measured or installed against it. Raising a discrepancy early, and referring it back to the trade responsible, keeps responsibility clear and avoids furniture being asked to compensate for work outside our scope.

Finished openings for wardrobes, media walls and other fitted cabinetry need to match the dimensions on our drawings once plastering, flooring and any structural work around them is complete. We ask for a final check of these openings before manufacture, and raise any variance immediately rather than adjusting the design to fit an opening that has moved.

Where furniture incorporates power, data or lighting, we coordinate directly with the builder or their electrician on exact positions, working from the electrical drawing or a site confirmation rather than an assumption made at design stage. See /bespoke-furniture-technical-drawings for how we record these positions.

A builder's programme rarely runs exactly as first planned, and we build some flexibility into our own scheduling to accommodate reasonable movement in installation dates. What we ask in return is early notice of a genuine change, so our workshop and installation team are not committed to a date that a site cannot actually support.

Where our furniture is one of several fitted elements on a project — alongside a kitchen, wardrobes and a media wall in different rooms, for example — we sequence our own installation across those rooms in the order the builder confirms them ready, rather than requiring the whole property to be finished at once.