Fitted Gun Cabinets

A fitted cabinet becomes part of the wall rather than an object standing against it. It makes better use of an awkward space, it matches the joinery already in the room, and a wall of them will often do the work of a gun room for a fraction of the cost.

This is the option we most often end up recommending to people who came to us asking about a room. If the collection has outgrown a single cabinet but the house does not have a spare room — or the room it does have is the wrong room — fitted work is usually the better answer, and it is a considerably smaller intervention in the building.

When fitted is the right answer

• There is joinery already. A panelled hall, a run of library shelving, a boot room, a dressing room. A freestanding piece standing in front of it will always read as an addition.
• The space is awkward. An alcove, a chimney return, an under-stairs run, a low eaves wall. Fitted work uses every millimetre; freestanding furniture cannot.
• The room is being done anyway. If there is a builder on site and a scheme being drawn, this is the cheap moment to do it properly.
• You want it to disappear. Fitted work is the route to concealment — you cannot hide a freestanding cabinet, but you can hide a run of panelling.
• The building will not take a lined room. Some listed and historic fabric will not accept fixing at the density a full steel lining requires. Individually anchored fitted cabinets are a far smaller intervention.

A wall of cabinets instead of a room

Worth setting out properly, because it saves people a great deal of money.

A fitted gun room starts at around £20,000, and that assumes your builder has already prepared the room — we line the walls in steel, fit and clad a firearms door, and fit out the interior, but we do not carry out building work. A run of fitted cabinets in an existing room needs no builder at all, and each cabinet carries the full specification on its own: 3mm (0.12in) steel throughout, folded doors with anti-cut pins, EN 1300 Class A locking, separately locked ammunition provision, anchored into masonry.

What you give up is the room itself — the working space, the cleaning bench, the place to stand. What you keep is the security, the capacity and the look. For a collection that has outgrown one cabinet but does not need a dedicated room, that is a very good trade.

We will tell you honestly which one your situation calls for. We would rather sell you the right thing once.

Where they go

Position	Why it works
Alcove beside a chimney breast	The classic. Depth is already there and the piece reads as built-in from the start
Within a run of panelling	Shut lines fall on joints the panelling would have had anyway
Within library or study shelving	A section of shelving that is not shelving. Very hard to spot
Boot room or back hall	On the route in from the field, alongside coats, boots and dogs
Dressing room or wardrobe run	Behind or within cupboard joinery. Discreet by nature
Under-stairs	Uses a space nothing else uses. Needs careful drawing for gun height

The one position we push back on is a room used by people who do not live in the house. Fitted or not, a cabinet in a room contractors pass through is a cabinet a lot of people know about.

Matching existing joinery

This is the whole job, and it is skilled work rather than a finishing touch.

Matching means the timber and its figure, the moulding sections, the panel proportions, the ironmongery, the shut lines, and — the hardest of all — a finish that has been ageing for forty years in a particular light. Get all of that right and nobody can tell which part of the wall is new. Get the moulding nearly right and it is the only thing anyone sees.

What we need from you, in descending order of usefulness:

1. A physical sampleAn offcut, a spare length of moulding, a drawer front, a door removed from a cupboard nobody uses. This is worth more than everything below it put together.
2. A paint referenceThe actual name and manufacturer, not a guess from a screen. We will not match a colour from a photograph.
3. PhotographsWide shots and close-ups of the mouldings, taken in daylight without flash.
4. The original drawingsIf the joinery was made in the last thirty years, somebody may still have them.

Finishing is all done in our own finishing shop by our own polisher, which is why we can stand behind a match. Matching is a finishing problem far more than a timber problem, and it is not something that can be subcontracted and then guaranteed.

The survey does more work

On a freestanding piece the survey confirms that the cabinet will fit and that the wall will hold it. On fitted work the survey is the design.

We measure the opening at several heights and several widths, because almost nothing in an older house is square, and joinery of this weight has no tolerance for a wall that is 12mm out at one end. We check floor level across the run, we check for a rising floor at the skirting, and we set out where every scribe will fall.

We survey even where there is a full set of architect’s drawings. That is not scepticism about the drawings — it is that a remake is a great deal more expensive than a survey.

What is behind the plaster

The question that decides whether the design works at all, and the one that most often surprises people.

A fitted cabinet is anchored into the structure of the building, into masonry wherever masonry exists. Where the wall is timber-framed we locate studs and noggins and fix into those, adding backing where the frame does not give us enough. Plasterboard is not a fixing, and dot-and-dab plasterboard over blockwork needs the anchors to reach past the void into the block behind.

We establish this at survey and record it on the drawing, and the anchor type and fixing centres go onto the signed specification sheet at handover. Where a wall is genuinely unsuitable we say so then — not on installation day — and there is almost always a solution: a different wall, a different anchor, backing built in behind, or a change to the back of the cabinet.

Independent locking

On a run of more than one or two cabinets, we lock each bay separately. It costs very little and it is the single most useful thing about a wall of fitted cabinets.

It lets you separate working guns from best guns, rifles from shotguns, ammunition from firearms, and — in a house with staff, family or regular guests — the bay that gets opened every week from the bay that gets opened twice a year. A single key turn should not open everything you own, and a lost key should mean replacing one lock rather than all of them.

Responsibility for meeting the security condition on your certificate rests with you as the certificate holder, and the adequacy of any storage arrangement is a matter for your local police firearms licensing department. We agree the specification with your firearms enquiry officer before we make anything — see the FEO process. Nothing on this page is legal advice.

Where our work stops

We fit out. We do not carry out building work.

Structural alterations, forming or altering openings, first-fix electrics, plaster, screed and floor finishes are all your builder’s, and on most fitted commissions there is very little of any of it. Typically we need the wall substrate confirmed, first-fix power to agreed positions for cabinet lighting, and the room decorated where our joinery will meet existing finishes. Final electrical connection is your electrician’s.

Where there is no builder, we will tell you what needs doing in enough detail for a local one to price it. On fitted cabinet work it is usually a very short list — which is precisely why this is often the better answer than a room.

Questions we are asked

What a survey for fitted gun cabinets actually finds

A freestanding cabinet forgives a wall. A fitted one does not, and the survey is where fitted work is either de-risked or quietly set up to fail. Ours takes two to three hours for a single run and half a day for a room, and this is what it is looking for.

The one thing that is not our decision

If the wall will not take a proper anchor, fitted gun cabinets are the wrong answer in that position and we will say so at survey rather than after manufacture. The Firearms Security Handbook is clear that the fixing is part of the security, and a beautifully made cabinet screwed to a stud wall is a cabinet that leaves the house on a trolley.