How a Custom Wine Cabinet Is Installed on Site
Your fitter installs to our numbered setting-out drawing: datum lines first, then the scribed frame, then glass and doors, then the cooling commission. The cabinet has already been dry-fitted complete in Foshan before it was crated.
Six steps from crate to signed off
The order is not arbitrary. Levelling before fixing, and fixing before hanging doors, is what keeps the reveals even without shimming the frame afterwards.
Crate arrives
Panels are numbered to the setting-out drawing, glass travels in its own crate, and hardware is boxed and labelled by cabinet position.
Check before opening
Floor level within 3 mm across the footprint, wall plumb, circuit live and correctly rated, and a route from the door to the wall that the longest panel will pass.
Set out the datum
One chalk line at the finished floor and one at the cabinet centre, taken from the drawing. Everything after this measures from those two lines, not from the room.
Trim the scribe and fix
The 40 mm scribe on the outer stiles is trimmed to the wall and the frame is fixed through the rear rails into studs or masonry.
Hang glass and doors
Doors go on after the carcass is fixed and level; the reveal is set to 3 mm and adjusted at the hinges, not by moving the frame.
Commission the cooling
Cooled cabinets run on a dedicated 110 V / 60 Hz circuit for the US. Power up for 24 hours before loading bottles, with the plinth vent clear.
What is in the crate
Panels numbered to the drawing, glass in a separate crate with edge protection, and a ' 'hardware box labelled by cabinet position. The setting-out drawing travels in a sleeve ' 'taped inside the lid, because a drawing that lives in an email is a drawing nobody reads ' 'on site.
Power and ventilation
A cooled cabinet runs on a dedicated circuit — 110 V / 60 Hz in the US, 220–240 V ' 'elsewhere — and needs about 50 mm behind it plus an unobstructed vent at the front of the ' 'plinth. Power it up for 24 hours before the bottles go in, so the cabinet is at ' 'temperature when it is loaded rather than working against a warm room.
Who does what
We design, build, dry-fit, inspect, photograph and crate. You arrange the site ' 'measurement, the shipping and the installation. That split is deliberate: the trades on ' 'site are local and accountable, and the drawing is what connects them to the workshop.
What we do not do is send a cabinet that has never been assembled. Every unit is dry-' 'fitted complete before crating, and the photographs of that dry fit are sent for approval ' 'before the balance is paid.
Sign-off checks
- Level
- Doors stay where they are put at any point of their swing
- Reveal
- 3 mm between door and frame, even top to bottom on both sides
- Glass
- No contact between glass and metal at any edge; gaskets seated all round
- Lighting
- Every LED run lighting evenly, no dark segment at a joint
- Cooling
- Cabinet reaches and holds its set temperature with the room at normal ambient
- Fixings
- No movement when the open door is loaded; all fixings driven, none shimmed loose
The first week
Two things are worth checking once the room is in use, because both are cheap to correct early and awkward later.
Doors after a week
Solid timber and stainless both move a little in the ' 'first week of a new room. Re-check the 3 mm reveal at the hinges after seven days rather ' 'than adjusting the frame.
Cooling in a warm room
A cabinet loaded with room-temperature bottles will ' 'run hard for the first day. Judge it on the second morning, with the room at its normal ' 'temperature and the plinth vent clear.
Keep the drawing
The measured drawing is the record of your wall. Keep it ' 'with the property documents; a later matching cabinet is built from it.
What fitters and clients ask
Can we install it ourselves?
Yes, and most clients do. The cabinet arrives as numbered panels with a setting-out drawing, which is the same document the dry fit in Foshan used. A competent kitchen fitter is the right trade; no refrigeration work is involved.
Do you send a fitter?
Not by default. For larger runs a supervisor can attend, and that is quoted per project. It is worth asking about on a wall beyond 3,000 mm or a two-storey cellar.
What if the wall has moved since measuring?
It happens on new builds. Check the width at three heights again before the crate is opened; if it has moved by more than the 40 mm scribe can take, stop and call us rather than trim.
How long does installation take?
A single cabinet is a day for one fitter. A run of four metres or a cellar with cooling is two to three days, mostly spent levelling and hanging doors rather than fixing the frame.
Tell us who is fitting it
Send the room and the trade you have on site. We will tell you what the drawing asks of them before the crate is booked.