Six carpenters who fit their own work
Nothing leaves here to be installed by somebody who has never seen it.
Why no wall in Malé is square
Vadaan opened in 2012 in a unit in Industrial Village with two carpenters and a table saw. There are six of us now, a spray room and about four hundred kitchens behind us.
The thing that shapes how we work is that no wall in this country is square, and very few are plumb. Block and render built by hand over a few weeks moves, and a room that measures three thousand one hundred millimetres at the floor will measure three thousand one hundred and nineteen at shoulder height. That is not a criticism of anybody's building. It is simply the condition we work in, and a workshop that pretends otherwise produces furniture with gaps.
So everything we make has scribing built into it. A run of kitchen units ends in a filler that is cut on site to the wall rather than made to a number. A wardrobe has a scribe strip against the wall and a shadow gap at the ceiling. Doors are hung in frames that are packed and shimmed rather than assumed. None of this is visible in the finished job, and it is the entire difference between fitted furniture and furniture standing near a wall.
The second decision was to fit our own work. Two of the six carpenters go to every installation, and they are two of the people who built it. When a wall turns out to be nineteen millimetres out, they solve it with a plane in ten minutes rather than telephoning the workshop to complain about the measurements they were given.
We do not do site carpentry, formwork or roofing. We make furniture and doors, and we say who to ring for the rest.
The people in the workshop
Ali Vaseem
Opened the workshop in 2012 with a table saw and one helper. Does the measured surveys himself and is the reason nothing here is quoted befo...
Hassan Thoha
Runs the bench and the cutting. Housed backs, eighteen millimetre carcasses and a scribe strip on every wall are all his rules.
Ahmed Rifau
Fits what he builds. Carries kitchens up stairwells, finds the nineteen millimetres a wall is out and solves it with a plane rather than a t...
Sithi Munaa
Prices the work by the running foot, keeps the material and laminate records, and tells you honestly which week the fitters are free.
How long, and made of what
How long does the work take?
Three weeks for a wardrobe, four for a bathroom vanity, six for a kitchen, and two weeks for a set of doors. That is from the approved drawing, not from the first conversation.
Anybody promising a fitted kitchen in three weeks is either not spraying anything or not letting the finish cure. Two of our six weeks are finishing.
What do you build things from?
Carcasses in eighteen millimetre melamine faced board. Doors in laminate faced MDF or sprayed MDF, or solid timber where the design asks for it. Anything in a wet area in marine plywood.
We will not build a bathroom or sink unit in MDF at any price. MDF swells irreversibly the first time water sits on an edge and the part then has to be remade rather than repaired.
Will a tall wardrobe fit up my stairs?
Probably not in one piece, and that is fine. A two point four metre carcass will not turn on most Malé landings, so we build in two or three sections with the joins hidden inside and assemble in the room.
We measure the stairwell at the survey. The tightest turn on the way up decides the largest piece we make.
Do you use stainless hardware?
Stainless or coated hinges and runners as standard, and we will not fit plain steel within sight of the sea.
Plain steel hardware in a Malé bathroom or a seaward bedroom shows rust in under two years. Replacing thirty hinges on a fitted wardrobe costs far more in labour than the hardware ever saved.
Come and see something being made
Industrial Village, Malé. There is usually a kitchen on the bench and you are welcome to look at the back of it.