Carpentry and joinery

External timber, honestly

A timber pergola, shutter set or external door on this island looks superb and it is a commitment. Salt, UV and wind-driven rain work on it continuously, and it needs re-finishing on a cycle rather than once.

We would rather say that at specification stage than have you discover it in year three. The choices are:

• Accept the maintenance cycle and budget for it. This is the right answer where the appearance genuinely matters — and on a caldera terrace it usually does.
• Choose species and finishes that extend the interval, accepting a higher initial cost.
• Let it weather deliberately, with a species that greys gracefully rather than degrades.
• Use another material where timber is being chosen out of habit rather than intent — see metalwork and aluminium windows.

Buildings that are closed for six months

A seasonal property here sits shut through a damp winter and is then opened, aired and air-conditioned through a dry summer. Solid timber moves through that cycle, and joinery detailed as if the building were continuously occupied will gap, bind or split.

• Engineered and stable-core construction for large panels and doors, with solid timber used where movement is accommodated by the detail.
• Doors hung with clearance appropriate to a building that changes dimension seasonally.
• Finishing on all six faces, including the top and bottom edges that nobody sees and that absorb moisture first.
• Ventilation in built-in furniture against external walls, so a wardrobe back does not become a mould pocket over winter.

Joinery for vaulted and cave rooms

A rectangular fitted unit in a room with curved walls and a vaulted ceiling looks like a mistake. Traditional interiors here solved it with built-in elements that follow the geometry — bench seating in the curve, niches cut into the wall thickness, storage that fills the awkward volume where the vault meets the floor.

That is genuinely bespoke joinery in the proper sense: scribed and made to the actual room, not ordered from a catalogue and packed out. It is the single highest-value carpentry investment in a cave property, because it turns unusable volume into storage in a building type that has very little of it.

What we make and fit

• Bespoke fitted furniture, wardrobes, bench seating and storage scribed to vaulted and irregular rooms.
• Internal doors, frames and architraves.
• External doors, shutters and window joinery where timber is the right answer.
• Pergolas and shade structures, wind-rated and fixed into structure.
• Staircases and balustrades, coordinated with metalwork and glass.
• Decking and external timber, with the maintenance interval stated up front.
• Kitchen carcassing and fitting — see kitchen fitting.