Wellswood is unusual for Torquay because so many of its houses are still single family homes, with every bedroom in use. That makes fitted wardrobes here less about squeezing in storage and more about getting a big room to work. We build them for the Victorian villas on Barrington and Ellesmere Roads, for the 1853 houses of Wellswood Park and for the 1930s detached homes on Wellswood Avenue. The door style changes with the house: deep ogee mouldings for the older villas, plainer chamfered or ledged fronts for the interwar ones. Everything is made at our Barton workshop and fitted by the same people.
Tell us roughly what you have in mind and we will arrange a time to come and measure. A photo of the space on your phone is usually enough to start with.
The Joiner Behind It
Wellswood's family homes have generous bedrooms, so fitted wardrobes here are less about squeezing storage in and more about giving a large room a proper layout.
Joinery has been Luke's work since he was a child, and it's a family trade. Planning a whole wall, or a dressing room, so it reads as one piece is a skill experience builds. Luke and the team draw it out with you at the measure.
Wellswood
Wellswood Hall had 26 acres around it when March Phillips built it in 1840, and the neighbourhood grew out of those grounds in stages. That history is visible upstairs. A mid-Victorian bedroom here tends to have a high ceiling, a chimney breast and a deep skirting. A Wellswood Avenue bedroom from the early 1930s is lower, squarer and more likely to have plain joinery, sometimes in oak. A wardrobe that looks right in one would look slightly off in the other, which is why we start by working out which kind of room you have.
Because these are family houses, the brief often covers more than one room: a main bedroom with a dressing area, a child's room that needs to grow up with them, a guest room that has to hold out-of-season clothes. We are happy to plan them together so the doors agree across the landing. If your sash windows are in the same state as your storage, our page on timber windows and doors for Wellswood deals with the outside of the house.
The Case For It
We look at the room's own doors and skirting first. A Victorian villa gets panelled fronts with mouldings to match; a 1930s house gets a simpler face that suits its architraves.
Larger Wellswood bedrooms have room for a dressing table, a mirror and drawers between two wardrobe runs. We draw the whole wall as one piece so it does not look assembled from parts.
Adjustable shelving and rails that move up as a child grows, so the same wardrobe works at six and at sixteen without being rebuilt.
A spare room used twice a year can hold suitcases, winter coats and bedding behind a plain run of doors, and still look like a guest room when visitors arrive.
Oak or painted tulipwood for the doors and visible ends, with sealed, edged boards inside. You get the look of furniture without paying for solid hardwood where nobody sees it.
Wellswood is a short drive from Barton, which makes it easy for us to bring sample doors round or come back to adjust a hinge after the first winter.
Before You Choose
A good maker will ask when the house was built before talking about colours. In Wellswood that matters, because the area spans the 1850s to the 1930s and the joinery changes over that time. If nobody asks, you may end up with Victorian-style doors in an Arts and Crafts bedroom, or the other way round.
Ask for a drawing of the inside with dimensions on it. Hanging rails, drawer heights and shelf depths are where a wardrobe either suits your family or annoys it daily. A quote that only describes the doors leaves the important decisions to whoever is fitting it.
Finally, check what the carcasses are made of and how the visible edges are finished. Painted doors on a well-sealed board will stay flat in a heated bedroom. Raw chipboard edges and thin backs are where cheaper wardrobes start to fail.
Compared
With the bigger rooms found in Wellswood, the question is often how much of the room to give over to storage. These four approaches cover most of what we are asked for.
| Single fitted run | Wall with dressing table | Walk-in dressing room | Freestanding furniture | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Floor space used | About 600mm off one wall | One wall plus a knee space | A whole small room | Wherever it stands |
| Best Wellswood fit | Guest and children's rooms | Main bedrooms in villas | Box room beside the main bedroom | Rooms you may reorganise |
| Matches period joinery | Yes, made to match | Yes, made to match | Doors optional | Depends on the piece |
| Hanging capacity | Good | Good, with drawers | Highest | Limited |
| Building work involved | None | None | Sometimes a new door or opening | None |
| Relative cost | Lower end of our range | Middle to upper | Upper end | Varies widely |
Our Process
These are the seven steps for every wardrobe we build in Wellswood. Matching the house happens at the start, so the later stages run without surprises.
We measure the bedroom, note the ceiling height, skirting and picture rail, and look at the other doors on the landing to see which period the joinery belongs to.
Who uses the room, what they hang, what they fold and how many shoes there really are. This sets the layout behind the doors.
A plan and elevation of the wardrobe, the interior laid out, and the door style shown against the room. Once you approve it, the price is fixed.
Boards and timber rest in the workshop until they reach the moisture level of a heated house, so painted panels stay true after fitting.
Each section is made, put together and the doors hung on the bench before anything comes to Wellswood.
Spray or hand-painted finishes are applied at the workshop. That keeps the dust and smell out of your bedroom.
We install, scribe the edges to the walls and return the skirting. A few months later we call back to adjust anything the heating has moved.
Reassurance
Budget
£2,500 – £12,000
typical fitted wardrobe run
A single run of doors in a guest room sits at the lower end of the range. A main bedroom wall with a dressing table, drawers and painted panelled doors matched to a Victorian villa sits towards the top. Several rooms done together usually work out better value than one at a time, because the survey, drawing and fitting days are shared. The joinery cost guide explains what else moves the figure.
Guide range only, VAT included. Your figure comes from the measured visit and the drawing you sign off.
What moves the priceCopying an ogee moulding from a Barrington Road villa means grinding a cutter to the profile. It is a one-off cost that is shared across every door on the job.
Victorian bedrooms in Wellswood Park and on Ellesmere Road are tall, which adds top cupboards and board. The 1930s houses on Wellswood Avenue need less.
Most Wellswood houses have a drive or space on the road, so delivery is a small line on the quote and we can bring larger sections in one go.
Questions
Feedback
Rated 5 out of 5
“Our bedroom is in one of the old Warberries villas and the back wall bows by about an inch and a half across four metres. Two national firms measured it, quoted, then went quiet. These came, measured, and said it needed scribing rather than filling. The wardrobes go right into the corner and there is no gap anywhere. My husband keeps running his hand down the join.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“We run a bar on the harbourside and needed the counter and back fittings replaced without losing a summer weekend. They built the lot off site, came in on a Sunday night and had us trading by Tuesday lunchtime. Knowing the whole thing was made before they ever shut our doors is what sold it.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“Sash windows on the front elevation, and we are in a conservation area so it had to be timber and it had to match. They took a profile off the original, made new boxes in accoya, and the planning side went through without a query. From the pavement you genuinely cannot tell which is which.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“Two alcoves either side of the chimney, and they turned out to be 40mm different in width, which explains why the flat-pack ones we tried first never sat right. Made as a pair but to two different sets of measurements. Small thing, but it is the difference between looking fitted and looking bought.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“We let our place out over the season so everything gets hammered. I asked them to over-specify the drawer runners and they did, and told me exactly which ones so I can order spares. Three summers in, nothing has sagged. The last kitchen we had did not last two.”
Local
Wellswood sits a short walk from the Ilsham valley and the headland, so a measuring visit here can easily end with a walk.
One of Britain's oldest human sites lies in the Ilsham valley. A jawbone fragment from Kents Cavern has been dated to around 41,000 to 44,000 years ago, and the cave is visited on guided tours.
Learn more about Kents Cavern on Google Maps
A steep path from Anstey's Cove Road drops to this small cove, where grey limestone cliffs hold over a hundred climbing routes and the clear water draws snorkellers.
Learn more about Anstey's Cove on Google Maps
Thatcher Point is a wide lawn on Ilsham Marine Drive facing Thatcher Rock. The coast path here includes the Bishop's Walk, made for Bishop Henry Phillpotts.
Learn more about Ilsham Marine Drive And Thatcher Point on Google MapsCoverage
Wellswood is one of many Torquay neighbourhoods we work in. The full list is below, including towns across Torbay and Teignbridge.
Tell us which rooms need storage and roughly how they are used. We will visit, measure and come back with drawings and a fixed price for each one.
