Example photo by Pete Alexopoulos on Unsplash, not our project
Enfield · London
Alcove Units in Oakthorpe Park
We make alcove units in moisture-resistant MDF and birch plywood for homes in Oakthorpe Park. Each piece is finished by spray or by hand, in the colour you choose.
- Alcoves that aren’t square
- Clutter with nowhere to go
- Room to work in an alcove
Alcove units in Oakthorpe Park
Alcove units in Oakthorpe Park: what you get
An alcove can also take a small desk, with shelving overhead and storage underneath. It gives you a place to work without turning a room into an office. Desk height and depth are agreed with you. If you’re living with shelving for books and records and old alcove cupboards that have seen better days, that is what alcove units are for, made from birch plywood and moisture-resistant MDF with a spray-painted or hand-painted finish.
In streets where so much of the housing went up before 1919, as it did around Oakthorpe Park, the living room is often two rooms knocked through, with a chimney breast in each half. That can mean one pair of alcoves for shelving and the other for low cupboards, with the screen on a chimney breast between. Older internal walls can be lath and plaster rather than brick, which changes how shelving is fixed.
Once you have read the quote and decided to go ahead, the furniture is built in our workshop. It describes the design, the materials and the finish agreed at the visit, so you can check every detail beforehand.
- Location
- Oakthorpe Park (N13, N22, N11)
- Borough
- Enfield
- Prices
- Quoted for your room
- First step
- A design visit: we measure and talk it through
- Made
- Workshop-made, then fitted
- Made from
- MDF and plywood, painted to order
- Working days
- Weekdays; Saturdays on request
- Contact
- The contact form
- Last updated
- 27 October 2026
From workshop to your room
You won’t need to do much on the day. We need someone to let us in at the start, and the room should already be cleared. From there, we protect the floors, bring the furniture in and get on with the fitting. How long the fitting takes depends on how many alcoves there are and how tall the units go, and your quote sets out the fitting days. Terraced streets in London are often lined with parked cars, so it’s useful to tell us during the design visit what’s outside. The van is unloaded quickly, with the sections carried straight in. Saturday fitting can be arranged.
- You contact us with a short note about the room and the units you have in mind, and a rough sketch helps if you have one.
- At the design visit, we measure each alcove and go through the layout with you, checking how far the walls are out of square.
- We send a quote in writing for the units.
- The units are made at our workshop.
- The units are fitted in your home and scribed to follow the walls.
Before fitting day
- Leave a clear route from the front door to the room
- Tell us about any meters, fuse boards or boilers in the area
- Mention any parking restrictions on your street
Arranging a design visit
Because every job is different, the cost is set out in a written quote after the visit. Because every room is different, the quote comes after the design visit, when we’ve measured up and talked through the design. To arrange a visit, tell us about the room on our contact form.
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Neighbourhoods near Oakthorpe Park
Other services in Oakthorpe Park
Flats, blocks and rented homes
If the property is let, we will need access agreed with the tenants. A letting agent can arrange this on a landlord’s behalf, and the written quote can go to whoever needs it.
Leaseholders should check the lease before anything is fixed to the walls. Some leases need the building owner’s consent for alterations, which is worth sorting early. We cannot advise on your lease.
Where other trades come in
It’s useful to know what’s outside our work before you plan:
- Replastering, which is a plasterer’s job
- Curing damp, which needs the right specialist
- Moving sockets or switches, which needs an electrician
If you are not sure what’s possible in your room, you can tell us about the room on our contact form and we will give you a straight answer before you arrange a visit. How it works.
What goes into it
- Spray-painted finish
- Moisture-resistant MDF
- Adjustable shelves
- Panelled or flat doors
- Hand-painted finish
- Scribed side panels
- Birch plywood
Bespoke or off-the-shelf?
To be fair, a standalone bookcase or cabinet can go with you to your next home. Fitted alcove units stay with the house and are left behind when you go. It depends on how long you expect to stay. Tall ceilings in older homes leave a band of empty wall above standard furniture, and that space collects dust instead of storage. Fitted furniture can go all the way up.
Parking is part of the price picture in London. The boroughs run controlled parking zones across much of the city, so we may need a visitor permit, a paid bay or a suspended bay near your home. Tell us about parking at the design visit, so it can be planned.
Why work with us in Oakthorpe Park
- Workshop-made and fitted by us
- Fitted tight to walls that are not straight
- Saturday visits and fitting by arrangement
- Made in moisture-resistant MDF and birch plywood
Take a look at bespoke vs off-the-shelf and what to look for in a quote.
Your questions about alcove units in Oakthorpe Park
Can parking be tricky on fitting day in Oakthorpe Park?
It depends on the street, as many London boroughs run controlled parking zones. A van may need a visitor’s permit, a paid parking bay or a bay suspension, which the council arranges, often with notice. It helps to tell us about parking during the design visit, so the day can be planned around it.
My house in Oakthorpe Park is Victorian. Can you deal with uneven walls?
Yes, that’s normal in older houses: each piece is scribed to the wall and levelled at the base. Skirting, picture rails and cornices are met neatly or cut around. Older walls can be solid brick or lath and plaster, and the fixings are chosen to suit.
Do you cover Oakthorpe Park?
Yes. Oakthorpe Park is part of the area we cover. To arrange a design visit, drop us a line using the contact form.
What paint finish can I have on alcove units?
You can choose a spray-painted finish from our workshop or a hand-painted finish in your home. Either way, the colour is agreed with you. Spray painting is smooth and even, while hand painting is easy to touch up.
Do alcove units need to reach the ceiling?
It depends on the room and the look you want. Units can stop just under the picture rail or run up to the cornice, or run to the ceiling for a built-in look. We agree the height during the design visit.
Will you travel outside London?
No. We cover London only: every London borough and the City of London.
Living-room carpentry in Oakthorpe Park: local notes
Homes built before 1919 make up about 53% of the housing in the streets around Oakthorpe Park, with about 25% built between 1919 and 1939, going by the Valuation Office Agency’s 2025 council tax figures. That matters for alcove units, as the build era decides whether a wall is solid brick, lath and plaster, block or plasterboard. Near the centre of Oakthorpe Park, Historic England’s list includes Broomfield House Broomfield Park (Grade II*), about 0.5 miles west, and Truro House (Grade II), less than half a mile west. Where a home is listed, listed building consent can be needed for inside works that affect its character, such as fixing into original panelling. The council’s conservation officer is the person to ask before work starts. Red routes, run by TfL, have strict rules on stopping and loading. If your street in Oakthorpe Park joins a main road, it’s worth telling us at the design visit. We’ll plan where the van can stop.
For families living near St Anne's Catholic High School for Girls, a cupboard for board games and a shelf for reading books can go into the same design. If you live in a flat close to Palmers Green station, it helps to book the lift and tell the concierge before fitting day. Close to Broomfield Park? Shelving that stops short of the window keeps the view of the green.
Oakthorpe Park is within the London Borough of Enfield, about 2 miles east of Edmonton. We work across all London boroughs and the City of London, and Oakthorpe Park is part of that. Our work takes in places right across Enfield.
Design visits and fitting in N13, N22 and N11 work the same way as everywhere else we cover. You’ll find streets here such as Wolves Lane, Park Avenue and Russell Road, and homes on each of them are within our area for alcove units. The A105 run close to Oakthorpe Park; on busy main roads, unloading alcove units takes a little planning. We also cover the places around Oakthorpe Park: Palmers Green (1 mile north-west), Arnos Grove (1 mile west), Bounds Green (1 mile south-west), Bowes Park (1 mile south) and Southgate (1 mile north-west). Elsewhere in Enfield, we also cover Edmonton (2 miles east), Enfield (3 miles north), Enfield Chase (3 miles north), Bush Hill Park (2 miles north-east), Upper Edmonton (2 miles east) and Gordon Hill (4 miles north).
Near you in Oakthorpe Park
Around Oakthorpe Park, we cover homes near St Michael at Bowes CofE Junior School, St Thomas More Catholic School and The Alfred Herring pub and the streets around them. There is a railway station in Oakthorpe Park itself: Palmers Green station. A little further out are The Mall Wood Green (1.4 miles south) and Broomfield House Museum (0.5 miles west).
Could you do it yourself?
Standard units come in set widths and heights, so there’s often a strip of wasted space at the side or above. Furniture we make is built to the room’s own sizes, so it can run to the ceiling and fill the width.
If you’re handy, a simple shelf or a standard wardrobe in a square room is a reasonable DIY job. It gets harder with sloping ceilings, out-of-level floors and lath-and-plaster walls.