Fitted Joinery for a Hillside Home Overlooking Portree Harbour

On a wooded hillside above the estuary, looking out across the water towards Portree Harbour, this new build house was designed to belong to its landscape from the outside in. Clad in blackened timber and natural stone, with large sections of glazing that frame the views rather than interrupt them, the building sits quietly in its setting: dramatic in position, considered in character.

The brief for the interior followed the same logic. Led by the Room Studio, the intention was to create a space that felt calm and modern without competing with what lay beyond the glass: light timbers, natural fabrics, and an interior language rooted in restraint. 

The joinery would need to hold to that standard throughout.

A Full Interior, Built From One Idea

Young & Norgate were appointed to lead the construction design, fabrication, and installation of all fitted joinery throughout the house. The scope covered the kitchen, wall cladding, cloak cupboard, headboards, and bathroom joinery: a full interior commission requiring every element to speak the same material language from room to room.

With Room Studio setting the creative direction, our role was to translate that vision into joinery that could be made and installed to the standard the design demanded, and delivered to a site that required its own particular planning.

Calm by Design

Working closely with Room Studio, the joinery was developed as the material backbone of the interior: the element that would carry the palette and proportion of the design across every room. The ambition was a space that felt genuinely unhurried: light without being cold, considered without being precious.

Every decision was made in that spirit. Where storage was needed, it was concealed. Where surfaces were visible, they were resolved carefully enough to recede. The result was an interior where the joinery does its work without announcing itself: which is precisely what the setting required.

Ash, V-Grooves, and the Art of Concealment

Ash was selected as the primary material throughout: light enough to open the interior, characterful enough to hold its own against the stone and blackened timber of the building itself. Applied across kitchen fronts and wall cladding alike, the material gave the interior a consistency that carried from room to room without becoming repetitive.

V-grooves were introduced at key points to reference traditional tongue-and-groove detailing. In the kitchen, the most demanding element of the commission, the open-plan cooking area, was paired with a larder and utility concealed entirely behind jib doors. Flush, uninterrupted, and precisely fitted: the kind of detail that only works when perfectly completed.

Delivered to a Demanding Site

Installing a full interior fit-out on a sloping hillside site requires more than good joinery. Every component was fabricated in our Bristol workshop, fully resolved before leaving, and installed by our own team: maintaining the continuity of the interior as the space came together.

By the time the final elements were in place, the interior read as Room Studio had intended: calm, coherent, and entirely at ease with the landscape beyond the glass.

The Result

The completed house sits on its hillside with the quiet confidence of a building that knows exactly what it is. Inside, the joinery holds the interior together: kitchen to cladding to bedroom to bathroom, without a single element that draws attention to itself.

On a site this remote, with views this strong, that restraint is the highest form of craft.