Why wardrobe doors do not line up, and what scribing is

If you have ever seen a fitted wardrobe with a tapering gap down one side, you have seen a job that was not scribed.

No room is square

Plaster is thicker at the bottom of a wall than the top. Floors settle. Ceilings drop toward the middle of a span. Across a three metre bedroom wall, fifteen to twenty millimetres of difference from one end to the other is completely normal, and in an older house it can be more.

What scribing means

The carcass is built square, because a wardrobe that is not square will not have doors that hang properly. The gap between that square box and the crooked room is then closed with a filler piece, cut to follow the exact line of the wall, floor or ceiling. That cut is the scribe.

It is marked in the room with a compass or a block and a pencil, cut, offered up, and adjusted. It is slow and it is the part that separates fitted furniture from furniture pushed against a wall.

What it looks like when it is skipped

A wedge of daylight down the side. Doors that sit proud at the top and flush at the bottom. Cornice that does not touch the ceiling at one end. Caulk squeezed into a gap that gets wider every year as the caulk shrinks.

What to ask

Ask whoever is quoting how they intend to deal with the wall being out. If the answer is a shrug or filler, keep looking.