Built in wardrobe help please!

[oreoswithfriends]

Hoping someone can assist - we've moved into our first house (hurrah!) last month - and need some direction with how to best deal with what's currently there. Each bedroom has a space for a fitted wardrobe - i.e. each bedroom has an alcove of single/small double wardrobe size, with a rail inside, and a wooden door (not full door size, about 170cm).

They look a bit rubbish - and cheap - and are falling apart.

I guess we could either get a carpenter to make new doors or go to a Hammonds type place to get them to put in wardrobes with doors in the pre-existing space - or something else?

I'm really not sure what would be best and whether the space is big enough for a "normal" fitted wardrobe - although I guess we could have them bespoke - if the second option, are Hammonds a good idea? Does anyone have any better ideas? I just don't have loads of time to go through twenty different companies. We're in Surrey, near Guildford, if that helps.

It depends on your budget, I've heard the likes of Hammonds, Sharps, etc are very expensive and cost a good few grand. You might want to consider Ikea, but it depends on the size of your alcoves as ikea fitted wardrobes are 50cm, 100cm, 150cm, and it goes up in size by 50 cm.

A cheaper alternative would be to get a local carpenter to fit in some fitted wardrobes

We had this in our new build and bought some sliding wardrobe doors from www.spaceslide.co.uk/sliding-wardrobe-doors/ then got a chippy out to fit them and do some nice interiors.

How deep are your alcoves? I would get a joiner to come and put you some nice MDF ones in. If it's not standard ikea size it can be fiddly to make it look good. Our alcoves are about 40cm deep and 142cm wide. Not helpful for ikea wardrobes, they look a bit crap to be honest (although they are brilliant things and hold so very much!)

if you have alcoves, you don't need wardrobes, you just need doors.

Unless you are amazingly lucky, they will not be standard sizes and you, or someone else, will need to make a frame to fit, and make, or trim, a door to fit that. You can very likely get doors to match the house doors to the room, if you like that. You can get flush (flat) or panelled doors in a variety of sizes, finishes and quality. Flush foors can if you wish be papered or painted to match the wall, but the person fitting the frame must know you want that so it is all flush to the wall. Or you can paint doors to match the room door.

A reputable local joiner will do it faster and better than anyone else.

would a pair of 30" doors, or 28" doors, fit? Those are standard sizes. You can have them rebated which loses about an inch. Cheap hollow doors can be trimmed by about an inch, though a joiner can remake the edges if you need more.

Standard sized doors are cheapest and easiest to fit. They will be more rigid than MDF. Here are some examples. Note the range of sizes. You can look at them in any joinery merchant. Don't get grained doors which are revolting.

We had a local joiner build wardrobes in our alcoves which were the same dimensions as the Ikea Pax range. So we were able to use rails, baskets, inserts etc. off the shelf at Ikea, but without the expense of everything bespoke.