48-Unit Turnkey Apartment Fit-Out, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Project Snapshot

The Brief

Two residential blocks, 48 apartments, five months to hand over. The developer had been buying from a local joinery shop, and the failure was consistency: the second batch of doors came out visibly yellower than the first, and buyers raised it during snagging. By the time we were contacted, seven weeks of production time remained.

Three Real Problems

1. Board stability in a hot, dry climate. Riyadh interiors swing between air-conditioned cool and 45°C outside, with humidity often below 25%. If moisture content is not controlled, doors start to bow within three months.
2. Forty-eight units had to look like one. Batch production is where colour drift happens, especially on matte film and lacquer.
3. Site dimensions never match the drawing. Service points shift, walls are out of plumb. On bulk fit-outs, cabinets are often discovered to be wrong only on arrival.

Our Solution

• Kitchen — L-shaped layout, 270° hinges with corner carousels so the dead corner becomes usable storage. Tall unit with a vented microwave niche. 60 mm recessed plinth so a robot vacuum can pass.
• Wardrobe — Full-height 2.4 m with a 400 mm seasonal zone on top; interior split 50% hanging / 30% shelving / 20% drawers, with trouser racks and jewellery drawers specified differently for layout A and B.
• Vanity — Wall-hung with a 200 mm gap. Moisture-resistant plywood carcass with double-sided melamine. U-shaped drawer around the P-trap instead of cutting the box.
• Laundry cabinet — Stacked washer/dryer bay plus a 400 mm side column for supplies, 50 mm ventilation gap at the back and an access panel for the water inlet.
• Entry — Combined 350 mm full-depth and shallow cabinet, 150 mm open toe space under the bench for slippers.

Climate-Specific Build

Every board lot is moisture-tested on receipt and held to 8–10% (standard export tolerance is 8–12%). All panels are edge-banded on six sides, with 2 mm PVC instead of 1 mm. Door backs receive a balancing layer to reduce one-sided moisture uptake and bowing.

How 48 Units Stay One Colour

One project, one batch: all 48 units drawn from the same board lot, the same film roll, the same lacquer mix. The first panels off the line are retained as a colour reference and every subsequent shipment is compared against it before packing, held within ΔE 1.0.

QC & Delivery

• 100% pre-assembly: every cabinet is trial-fitted in the factory — holes, operation, gaps — then flat-packed.
• Unit-by-unit photo report before loading; container leaves only after client sign-off.
• Third-party inspection welcome; this project ran SGS at AQL 2.5.
• Flat packing, palletised by layout, with cabinets, doors, hardware and drawings numbered by layer so the installers work from numbers, not memory.

Results

48 units installed in 11 days. Three pieces reworked (doors damaged in transit, replaced with the next container, handover unaffected). The developer added 96 units in phase two.

Client Feedback

“The first batch looked exactly like the sample panel we approved five months earlier. That had never happened with our previous supplier.”