· Fitting · Technique
Why we scribe to the wall
No wall in an old house is straight. Instead of filling the gap, we cut the cupboard to fit it.
Hold a straight edge against the wall of any house built before 1950 and you’ll see daylight behind it. Most fitted furniture deals with that by leaving a gap and filling it with a bead of caulk, which cracks the first winter.
The scribe
We leave a few millimetres extra on every edge that meets a wall. On site, the cupboard goes in square and level, and we run a pencil along the wall with a block of wood the width of the gap. That line is the shape of the wall. Then the cupboard comes out, we plane to the line, and it goes back with no gap at all.
It adds half a day to a fitting. You’ll never notice it, which is the point.