Why Choose K Rose for your Furniture?

In the corporate world we live in now, there are so many choices for everything. This is no different with furniture and bedroom fitting. On the high street, there are 2-3 well known bedroom companies in the UK, before getting to the well-known joinery, kitchen, and bathroom companies, who offer fitted wardrobes and shelving units.

So why would anyone choose a smaller, lesser known company over the big name brands?

Like so many smaller companies, K Rose offers a bit more of a personal touch. With the larger companies, colour is limited: you may be offered white, cream, black, anthracite, light grey, dark grey, or 'wood effect' colours.

But where's the rest? No blue? No green? What about florescent yellow or wine red? If your bedroom is pastoral, maybe you want a nice sage colour, or if it's a bit more earthy then a warm clay colour? We don't base the unit on the paint. We build the unit as it is required and finish with any available paint colour. On our first visit we will bring a few select but well known paint colour charts to recommend a colour for your room and discuss the colour with you in person. Maybe the colour you like isn't one of the well known brands? Or maybe you've got excess paint left over from after your room was decorated? No problem! As long as we can acquire the paint (and there is enough of it) we can use that to paint the units. But if that doesn't effect you, we hope you will choose K Rose or another small, up and coming company to help us grow, and to help bring back a love for the work rather than the support of mass-production. Though we obviously hope you choose K Rose, we understand if you are drawn to a different company. Still, we hope you will support up and coming companies, sole traders and limited local companies rather than the large, UK wide industries.

More personal touch: With the larger companies, you are likely going to deal with a multitude of people. When I briefly worked with one of those companies, on speaking to the customer they were always confused who they should speak to as a main support: they dealt with sales first, then a design team, then the delivery company who dropped the materials, then the installer and possibly a regional manager, and finally a contact for the final invoice. From my experience, this lead to a lot of crossed wires: sales promising certain aspects to the customer, the design team cutting out some of those aspects and adding others, the factory providing an entirely different system because their rules were different, the delivery company occasionally leaving materials in an inconvenient place (one time on top of the customer's bed), in the wrong room, or sometimes even left outside, the installer trying to please the customer and do the work they were sent to do (sometimes those two are mutually exclusive), and confusion when the regional manager says certain things should have been done which no one else has mentioned up to this point, or has been in such small print that it was missed. We try to be different. At this stage in our development, you will deal with one person through the whole process. Though we are hoping one day to expand, to have a few installers and a better design team, we will always strive to make the work about you, the customer. From the beginning until the end you will be told who you can contact regarding the work and there will be as few steps as possible to insure the process is smooth and easy for you.

Some specific scenarios (based on my customer experience so far)

We would like something we've seen on the internet, but the size doesn't fit our space. Can you remake it?

We can certainly try. A few years ago a customer wanted to buy a product from a well known furniture company, but the size was too tall for their room. We built it based on the online pictures, the width displayed on the site, and the height of the room for the customer, and managed to price match with the other company. We can't always promise it will be exactly the same or to price match, but we will always try our best to achieve what is asked of us.

We have an AI image of what we'd like. Can you work with that?

Just as the above, as long as we can get measurements and it fits in the space, we will certainly try. AI is a great tool for a lot of things, unfortunately it does occasionally think that certain spaces are different sizes to reality: for example, sometimes I will suggest fewer cupboards because it is making them look larger, when in reality to have as many as AI suggests in the space available they would be unusuably small. We will work with AI to a point, but will strive for practicality first.

We would like drawers without handles

No problem! One of the issues with the previous bedroom company was a confusion over this very issue, that the company only provided such drawers if they were inside a wardrobe. Sales and design said yes, the factory and regional manager said no. We can provide drawers with push catches, curved fronts for grip, or small recesses to grip (if accessible). Our paint isn't specifically furniture paint. Can we use that? Yes! Provided it is either wood paint or standard wall emulsion, we will prime the wood first, paint it the specific colour, sand it smooth (in the case that the paint isn't furniture paint, it can come out rougher. We bypass this by sanding between each coat with a high grit sandpaper to smooth down rough areas) and finish it with a clear varnish for a tough finish to reduce wear.

We are on a tight budget and painting doesn't seem too hard. Can we have it unpainted and do it ourselves? Absolutely! We understand that not everyone can afford everything at once, or maybe you enjoy painting or want to build an experience with your family. Unlike the big bedroom companies, we can provide the units unpainted for you to finish them yourselves. We will give recommendations on how to do it and may even be able to recommend some tradesmen in your area who are willing to paint it for you, should you change your mind after the install. Unfortunately, as we use sprayers to paint our units and only do touch-ups with brushes and rollers afterwards, we will not be offering on-site painting after the install.

What about wood-effect units? Most bedroom companies create their wardrobes and shelving units from materials such as MDF or chipboard, which is then wrapped in a finish material either made to a certain colour or made to look like wood.

At K Rose, we use MDF, plywood, and softwood when the unit is painted: MDF for that smooth, flawless look, plywood and softwood for a slight grain effect and to provide more strength where needed. For areas where you would like a wood-effect, we won't use wrapped material: we will use wood. This means the pieces are specially made from select wood types and choices (such as beech, oak, or pine to name a few) and are made from solid wood, as traditional furniture is. However, if you are on a budget, we can also suggest a ply-lipping combo: this is where we use plywood for large areas to have a wood-effect surface, but on all the edges of the plywood (where you see the layers) we glue on another wood to contrast it.

Is wood more expensive?

Unfortunately due to the material costs and the amount of extra work involved with wood, it is usually more expensive to use solid wood. There may be a few exceptions, and there are sine tunes

How much is a standard wardrobe?

We base the wardrobe on your space and the costing is based around that. But don't worry: we will arrange with you a free no-obligation quote.

How does the process work? What do we do first?

Viewing and Planning: Get in touch and think about what you would like. The first step is letting us know you'd like a viewing. We will arrange to come and view the space and discuss plans with you - though we can make some suggestions of what we would recommend, in the end it is your space and you have to live with it, so we strongly suggest having an idea of what you would like before we arrive. On viewing we will discuss what is to go in the space: where you would like shelves, where you would like hangers, where you would like drawers, etc. We will also discuss colours, finishes (matt, silk, gloss), and will exchange contact details.

Pricing: Then we go away to work out the quote and send it over to you. The quote will specify each wardrobe individually (if you choose multiples) and will feature the deposit.

Work begins: Once the deposit is paid, we will begin work and keep you updated with a rough idea of the date. This is the stage where things are quiet for you; we are working in the shop to make the boards approximately to size (oversized so we can make them perfect on site), making drawers, doors, and any painting is done at this stage.

Preparation for Install: Once everything is ready we will message you to arrange the best day for installation and request that you clear the area the wardrobe is going (preferably the whole room so we have space to work too) and a clear path to bring materials in.

Then the installation happens. The time period varies with wardrobe sizes, number of wardrobes, etc. but we hope to give you an estimate on time beforehand. Please allow some extra time in case there are any complications or mishaps we did not expect.

Final check and invoice: Once all work is complete we will go over the work with you to ensure everything is to your liking and as specified. Only then, once it is all finished as requested, will we send the final invoice.

And it's done!

If you would like a free no-obligation viewing and quote, please get in touch.