Made at Dalston since 1972

Boot rooms and utility rooms

The room that takes the weather, the dog and the washing. The boot room and the utility take more punishment than any other room in a Cumbrian house. Wet coats, dog towels, boots that were in a field an hour ago, and the washing that the kitchen no longer has space for.

Book a showroom visit 01228 710085

A fitted boot room in hand-painted sage in-frame cabinets: a bench with boot cubbies beneath it, coat pegs on an oak rail, tall cupboards and a butler sink, on a slate flagstone floor — Illustrative. Not a photograph of our work.

The argument

The room that stops the rest of the house getting muddy

A boot room that works has somewhere to sit down and take boots off, somewhere for the boots to drain, hooks where wet coats can hang without touching each other, and a cupboard for the things that have no other home.

A utility that works has a deep sink, space for the machines with access behind them, a run of worktop long enough to fold on, and tall storage for the things the kitchen should not have to carry.

Both of those are size problems, and size problems are what made to measure solves. A standard utility unit assumes a standard machine in a standard gap, which is not what your back porch is.

BOOT ROOMS AND UTILITY ROOMS · SPECIFICATIONThwaite Holme · Lingey Close · Dalston

Carcass: Birch ply, cut and machined at Dalston, lipped
Fronts: Hand-painted in-frame, in a harder-wearing colour if you want
Painted: Pre-primed in-house, hand-painted on site in water-based eggshell
Sink: Belfast or inset, from the showroom displays
Worktop: Quoted with the room
Drawn: Around your machines, your door, and the way you come in

Made at: Dalston
Fitted by: Our own men
Trading since: 1972
Drawings kept: Always

From our own jobs

Rooms we have already made.

Utility room at Dornock with a butler sink, brass tap and open shelves set into pale in-frame cabinets

Small oak kitchen fitted under a staircase, worktop and shelves cut to follow the line of the stairs

They are also the rooms most often left to whatever was cheapest, which is why they are the rooms that fail first. We build them out of the same materials as the kitchens, because they need it more.

Named and dated

Real houses, with the month on them.

01Dornock, DumfriesshireA curved island with the table built into it, DornockSeptember 2023

Where we work

Cumbria, and over the border.

We fit our own furniture across north Cumbria and into Dumfriesshire. Two of the jobs on this site are in Scotland, in the same house, two years apart.

Boot rooms and utility rooms: what people ask

What makes a boot room different from a row of cupboards?

Drainage, ventilation and a place to sit. Boots need to dry, coats need air round them, and taking wet boots off standing up in a narrow passage is how the mud gets into the hall. Those three things decide the layout before anything else does.

Can you build round the washing machine and the dryer I already have?

Yes. Tell us the machines and we draw the room round them, including getting at the back of them, which standard units frequently do not allow for.

Will it take being wet every day?

The finishes are the same ones we use in kitchens: water-based eggshell over an in-house primer on painted work, two-pack lacquer on timber. Both are specified to be washed rather than dusted.

The rest of the house

We make all of it.

01Bespoke kitchensMade in our own workshop at Dalston, and fitted by our own men.See the work 02Fitted bedrooms and wardrobesWardrobes cut to the wall you have, not the wall a catalogue assumed.See the work 03Dressing roomsA spare bedroom turned into the room you get ready in.See the work 04Home offices and studiesDesk, shelves and cupboards built into the room as one piece of furniture.See the work 05Media walls and TV unitsThe television, the boxes and the cables, put away inside the joinery.See the work 06Kitchen islands and lardersThe two pieces people remember, and the two worth making properly.See the work 07Free-standing furnitureWhere Bob Postlethwaite started in 1972, and we still make it.See the work

Talk to the workshop

Come and see one before you buy one.

01228 710085

Book a showroom visitor come in. No appointment needed to look round.

Lingey Close, Dalston, Carlisle, Cumbria, CA5 7LB. Parking on site.

Monday to Thursday: 8am – 5pm
Friday: 8am – 3.30pm
Saturday: 8am – 12pm
Sunday: Closed