People are shown finished furniture and quoted a price, and the two facts sit next to each other without explanation. This is an attempt to close that gap: one commission, start to finish, with the timings, the decisions, and the two points at which it nearly went wrong.
The piece is a fluted sideboard, 200 × 48 × 82cm, for a drawing room in DHA Phase 5. Oak carcass, walnut veneered doors, solid brass plinth, hardwax oil finish. Eight weeks from first visit to installation.
Week one — the visit, and the questions that are not about furniture
A commission starts in the room, not in the showroom. What I measure is obvious: the wall, the ceiling, the skirting profile, the socket positions, the door swing, the delivery route. What I ask about is less obvious and matters more.
- What goes in it? A sideboard holding table linen is a different object from one holding forty serving dishes
- Who opens it, and how often? Daily use argues for drawers; occasional use allows doors
- Does anything sit on top permanently — a lamp, a television, a tray?
- What is on the wall above it, or what will be?
- How does the light fall across it at the times of day the room is used?
- What else in the room is staying?
That last question changed this piece. The client had a walnut dining table staying and an oak floor. An all-walnut sideboard would have sat between the two without belonging to either, so the carcass went to oak and the walnut was confined to the doors — where it answers the table across the room.
Week two — drawings, and the argument they settle
Plan, two elevations, a section, and a full-size detail of the fluting profile. Plus a materials board: the actual oak, the actual walnut veneer, a brass sample, and the finish on a piece of the same timber.
The drawings are where a commission is actually designed, and the fluting is a good example. Drawn at 20mm pitch it looked mechanical; at 32mm it looked coarse. We settled at 26mm with a 4mm flat between each flute, which is a decision that took twenty minutes on paper and would have cost a new set of doors to discover in the workshop.
The client signs the drawings. This is not a formality — it is the reference document for everything downstream, and it is what a dispute would be judged against. Nothing is cut until it is signed.
Week three — selecting timber, and the first thing that went wrong
Oak is selected board by board for colour and figure, laid out on the bench, and marked for which board becomes which component. Boards with pronounced medullary ray go on the show faces; quieter boards go inside.
Every board is metered. Ours came in at 8.5% moisture content, which is right for a Lahore house. One board read 13% — it had been on the outside of the stack near a door — and it was set aside. This is the check that most commissions never receive, and it is the reason most split tabletops split.
The walnut veneer was the problem. The flitch we had planned on was three leaves short of covering four doors with a continuous book-match. Two options: use a second flitch for the outer doors, which would have shown as a colour break at the joint, or redesign the doors as two pairs, each book-matched within itself, with a deliberate 6mm shadow gap between the pairs.
We took the second option, which is better than the original design. That happens more often than anyone admits.
Weeks four and five — carcass and joinery
The carcass is cut, the joints machined, and everything is dry-assembled before any glue is used. Dry assembly is the stage that catches errors while they are still free — a shelf 2mm out of square, a rebate cut on the wrong face, a divider in the wrong bay.
- Components dimensioned and squared, then left for 48 hours so any internal stress in the timber releases before final sizing
- Joints cut — domino tenons for the carcass, housed dados for the shelves, rebates for the back
- Dry assembly, checked for square by measuring both diagonals. Under 1mm difference across 2 metres
- Glue-up in stages, with cauls to keep faces flat, and never more than one glue-up per session
- Back panel set into a rebate, not stapled to the outside
- Drawers made and fitted individually — each drawer belongs to its opening and is marked accordingly
The fluting was machined on the door blanks before veneering, with a purpose-ground cutter, in a single set-up so every flute matches. A door done in two set-ups shows a mismatch under raking light and cannot be corrected.
Week six — veneer, and the second thing that went wrong
The walnut is laid, taped, and pressed. The press stays closed overnight. It came out with a 40mm bubble near the bottom edge of one door — a void in the substrate, invisible until the veneer went over it.
The honest options were: inject glue and re-press, which usually works and occasionally leaves a slight telegraph; or re-lay that door, which costs three days and a leaf of veneer. We re-laid it. A telegraph shows at a shallow angle in the exact conditions the room has — a west window and evening light — and it would have been visible for the life of the piece.
This is the moment where the difference between a workshop and a production line shows. A production line ships it; a workshop absorbs three days.
Week seven — finishing, which cannot be hurried
Sanding to 240 grit, then a water pop — wiping the surface with a damp cloth to raise the grain, letting it dry, and sanding again. It doubles the sanding time and it is what stops the first coat of oil raising a rough surface.
- Coat one: hardwax oil, applied thin, worked in, excess removed within twenty minutes. Left 24 hours
- De-nib with a fine abrasive pad
- Coat two, thinner still. Left 24 hours
- Coat three on the top surface only, because that is where wear happens
- Cure for a further 72 hours before anything touches it
- Interior surfaces finished too — a piece finished only on the outside absorbs moisture unevenly and cups. This is not optional in this climate
It was late August, so the finishing room ran a dehumidifier and each coat took a day longer than in February. That is the two weeks a monsoon quote should carry, and the reason for it is in monsoon humidity and wood movement.
Week eight — hardware, inspection, delivery
The brass plinth was cast, filed, and fitted last, after the finish had cured, so no oil reached it. Handles were fitted with a drilling jig so all eight sit at identical heights — a detail nobody notices when it is right and everybody notices when it is not.
Then inspection, which I do myself, against a written list: every drawer runs; every door closes with an even gap; the diagonals still match; the finish is even under raking light; every surface, including the underside and the back, is finished; the brass is clean; the fixings are the right ones.
Delivery is measured before it happens. This piece went in through a doorway with 40mm to spare, which was known from week one because the route had been measured on the first visit. That measurement is why the delivery took twenty minutes rather than becoming a story.
What eight weeks buys
Roughly: three days of drawing and setting out, one day of timber selection, eleven days of machining and joinery, four days of veneer work, six days of finishing spread over two weeks because of curing, a day of hardware and inspection, and a day of delivery. The rest is waiting — for glue, for finish, for timber to settle.
About a fifth of the calendar is waiting that cannot be compressed. Any workshop quoting an eight-week piece in three weeks is removing curing time, and that decision shows up in year two as a finish that never fully hardened.
The two things that nearly went wrong were both caught because somebody was looking. That is what the price difference between a workshop and a factory actually buys.
What all of this costs, stage by stage, is in custom furniture in Lahore.
