Skip to content 
From the drawings it read like a long run of lockers. Thirty stalls, about ninety feet of cabinetry, set on a raised curb around the room. The job was the Pro Room at the Spruce Grove Community Centre, the home dressing room for the Spruce Grove Saints, built as part of the tenant improvement with V-Squared Consulting.
Then we measured the curb. It was not the same on any of its four sections. Every section met the next at its own angle, which meant no two pieces in the run could be cut the same way. Each one had to be built to the angle it was going to land on, and all of them had to close up tight where the sections met.
Angles are what catch people out on a job like this. A square room is forgiving. If a stall is out by a fraction you can pull it back over the next few feet and nobody sees it. On an angled run the error travels. Every piece inherits the one before it, so a small error in the first section is a visible gap by the fourth. The only way through is to get the measurements right before anything is cut, and to build each piece for its own position rather than building thirty of the same thing and trimming on site.
We also built grading into the cabinetry so the HVAC could do its job. A room full of gear has a smell, and the system can only pull it out if air can actually move through the space. Millwork that sits sealed tight to the floor stops the air and the smell stays. That detail does not appear on most millwork drawings. It gets noticed every day after handover.
The investor’s assessment when it was finished was that it was the best project he had seen.
What makes a dressing room harder than a kitchen?
Volume and repetition, with no room to hide. A kitchen is roughly a dozen cabinets in a space with square corners and a lot of forgiveness in the reveals. A dressing room is thirty near-identical stalls in a row, usually on an uneven base, where any inconsistency in spacing or angle repeats down the whole wall and is obvious from the doorway. The build is not more complicated per piece. It is far less tolerant of error across the run.
Three questions worth asking any millwork contractor before you award the job
Ask how they handle an out-of-square or out-of-level base. If the answer involves scribing and shimming on site rather than measuring and cutting for it, expect gaps.
Ask whether they build to the site measurements or to the drawings. On a renovation or a fit-out those are rarely the same thing, and the ones who assume the drawings are correct are the ones who come back for a second install.
Ask what they have done about ventilation, drainage or servicing behind the boxes. Anyone who has not thought about what happens behind the millwork has only quoted the front of it.
Working on a commercial fit-out in the Edmonton area
Prestige builds and installs commercial millwork across Edmonton, Spruce Grove, St. Albert, Sherwood Park, Stony Plain and Leduc. Send the drawings and we will tell you what we would need to check on site before quoting.
