A whole-apartment joinery schedule at the top of the residential market — twenty-plus bespoke units across nine rooms, every one drawn, specified to named makers, and priced line by line before a single sheet was cut.
The brief
An interior designer came to us with a full drawing set and a fittings specification for a high-end apartment. They needed the joinery package costed properly and produced — not a rough allowance, but a schedule they could put in front of their client with confidence.
The specification was unusually tight. Rather than naming materials, it named makers, finish codes and dimensions to the millimetre.
What was in it
Nine rooms, twenty-plus units:
- Entrance hall — coat cupboard, fully mirrored doors in a 5mm dark bronze frame, oak veneer carcasses, recessed vertical LED at 2700K
- Living room — a pair of bookcases, flush timber veneer doors with solid lipping 10mm proud, 40mm shelves, Arabescato stone tops with a 20mm pencil round and bespoke 30×150mm stone handles
- Kitchen — three elevations plus island. Flush finger-pull bases, dark brass waxed metalwork, Egger carcasses, Arabescato worktops with a 50mm reverse bullnose and matching splashback, 25mm bronze portal frame surrounds, sliding mirrored doors with dark bronze edging
- Utility — three separate units to match the primary joinery finish
- Lavatory — built-in stone basin in honed Breccia Medicea, surface mirror cabinet with demister, shaver socket and 2700K LED, foxed mirror panelling
- Master bathroom — stone basin vanity in honed white stone, recessed double mirror cabinet, wall niche clad to match the floor stone
- Bedroom — concealed storage and a bespoke upholstered headboard
- Dressing room — two walk-in wardrobe runs with integrated desk, mirror panels, a heavyweight linen back panel, and oak beaded wall panelling with a 35mm projection
Ironmongery and specialist elements ran to Joseph Giles hanging rails and edge pulls in matt and waxed dark bronze, Novocastrian metalwork, Studio Ore lacquered bronze and brassware, and antiqued glass by Rough Old Glass.
Appliances, sanitaryware and services were excluded and marked as such on every affected line.
What we did
Built the pricing schedule. We turned the designer’s drawings and fittings specification into a line-by-line schedule — item reference, description, room, specification notes, supply cost and install cost separated, appliance exclusions flagged per line. Every unit carried its own drawing reference.
Ran it out for competitive pricing. The schedule went to workshops in a controlled format, so every quotation came back on the same basis and could be compared line against line rather than as a single total. This is the part designers most often do not have time to do, and it is where the money is.
Priced supply and install separately. Splitting the two lets the client see what the fitting is actually costing and decide whether to use their own contractor. On a schedule this size that is a material decision.
Managed samples. Stone samples, finish panels, mirror samples at 300×300mm, ironmongery. Nothing was approved from a photograph.
The awkward part
Arabescato is a natural stone and it varies. The pieces specified across the kitchen, the bookcases and the bathrooms had to read as one scheme, which means slabs selected together from the same block rather than ordered as three separate line items over three months.
That is a sequencing problem, not a pricing one, and it has to be solved at the schedule stage. Once a worktop is cut from a different block, no amount of project management fixes it.
Why it matters
A schedule at this level is where a procurement house earns its position. The designer had done the design. What they did not have was three weeks to normalise eleven workshop quotations into a comparable format, chase specification clarifications, and hold the stone selection together across four rooms.