Joinery
Custom Fitted Wardrobes
Floor to ceiling, wall to wall. Built around the skirting, the cornice and whatever the last renovator left behind.
See how wardrobes work
About the workshop
Potimel: Six People, One Bench Room, Sixteen Years
Potimel is a furniture workshop on Kippax Street in Surry Hills, where six of us build fitted wardrobes and solid timber dining tables for homes across Sydney. We started as two blokes with a borrowed panel saw and a very patient landlord, and we still answer the phone ourselves.
Most of what leaves this building has a person's name on the back of the carcass in chalk. That is not sentiment. It is so we know who to ask when something needs fixing.
How we got here
From a shared bench to a full shop
The short version of a long story that involves a lot of sawdust, one flooded storeroom and a delivery van that we should have scrapped years before we did.
Potimel opened in 2009 with a single commission: a set of built-in shelves for a terrace in Redfern. The client has since moved twice and taken the shelves both times, which is either a compliment or a warning about how hard they are to remove.
The first three years were mostly kitchens. Kitchens pay the rent, but they also teach you that a lot of joinery problems come down to walls that are not square and floors that slope away from the door. We got very good at scribing, because we had no choice.
By 2014 the work had shifted. People started asking for wardrobes that used the full height of a room, and dining tables they could hand down. Those two things turned out to be the parts of the trade we actually cared about, so we narrowed the range and stopped bidding on kitchens. It was a nervous decision and the right one.
Today the shop runs to about 240 square metres. There is a spray booth, a proper template bench and a wall of clamps that has grown every year since 2011. The bench nearest the roller door still belongs to the first person we hired, mostly because nobody has been brave enough to suggest otherwise.
The crew
Who you will actually deal with
There is no account manager and no call centre. These are the people who measure your room, draw the job and cut the timber.
Tomas Beckett
Owner and lead cabinetmakerStarted the shop in 2009 and still does most of the site measures. Trained in joinery in Dublin before the travel bug brought him to Sydney in 2006. Has strong opinions about drawer runners and will share them.
Rosa Villanueva
Workshop managerRuns the schedule, the material orders and the paperwork nobody else wants to touch. If your job is running late, she is the one who will ring to tell you before you have to ask. Fifteen years in commercial joinery before she joined us.
Ben Achterberg
Cabinetmaker and installerOur first hire, back in 2011, and the reason the install days go smoothly. Knows how to get a 2.9 m carcass up a narrow Paddington staircase without taking a corner off. Builds the dining tables with Tomas.
Mei-Lin Ho
Drafter and designerTurns a rough sketch and a room photo into a scaled drawing you can actually argue with. Spends a lot of time asking what you own rather than what you would like to own. Joined in 2019 after a decade in retail fit-outs.
What we believe
Three rules we do not bend
Rule one
Measure twice, in the actual room
A drawing made from photos is a guess. Somebody from the shop stands in the space with a laser and a template board before anything is ordered. Walls lean, cornices are not level and the pipe is never where the plan says it is.
Rule two
The quoted price is the price
Once you have signed off on the drawing, the number does not move. If we underestimated the material or took too long in the shop, that cost sits with us. Variations you ask for later are quoted separately and in writing.
Rule three
Build it so it can be repaired
Screws you can reach, hardware we can still source in ten years, and joints that come apart on purpose instead of splitting. A wardrobe that cannot be fixed is a wardrobe with a short life, whatever it cost.
Numbers
The shop in figures
Nothing dramatic. Just the totals that built up while we were busy doing the work.
2009
Year the first bench went in
840+
Jobs delivered across Sydney
6
People on the floor right now
5 yr
Warranty on carcass and doors
Repeat and referral work
Roughly six in ten jobs come from someone we have already built for, or someone they told about us.
Waste and offcuts
Dry offcuts go to a local men's shed and to a school woodwork program in Alexandria. The rest is separated at the bin, not at the tip.
Projects
A few jobs worth showing
Photographed on install day, usually with a toolbox still on the floor.
Furniture
Solid Timber Dining Tables
Boards picked by hand, sized to the room, and finished so you can repair a scratch instead of hiding it under a cloth.
See how tables work
Visit us
The workshop door is usually open
We are two blocks from Central Station on the Surry Hills side of Kippax Street. Ring first and someone will be free to talk instead of mid-cut with earmuffs on.
Phone
+61 2 8412 6739
Email
potimel@hotmail.com
Address
110 Kippax Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010, Australia
Hours
Mon to Fri, 7:30am to 4:00pm. Saturday by appointment.
People often ask what happens if they change their mind halfway through. The answer is that we would rather stop and redraw than build something you will resent every morning. It costs less for both of us in the long run.