The Builder Special: Why Your Brand-New Closet Is Mostly Empty Air
One wire shelf and a rod, seven feet up, with about 43 cubic feet of nothing underneath. What the builder left out of your new-build closet, and what fits in the same eight feet.
GEORGIAN BAY STORAGE · PARRY SOUND, ON
Custom Cabinets and Storage for Parry Sound and the 30,000 Islands
Parry Sound is an hour and 21 minutes from our workshop at 73 Saunders Rd in Barrie, straight up Highway 400. What makes it different from the Muskoka lakes is not the drive. It is that a good share of the cottages here have no road to them at all, and everything that goes in has to cross water first.
Serving Parry Sound
OUR WORK
Storage Built for Parry Sound
Closets, mudrooms and boathouse storage are the parts of a cottage nobody planned. The house got a great room and a dock, and the gear ended up in piles by the side door. We build to your measurements, install with our own employees rather than subcontractors, and back the whole system with our Homeowners Lifetime Warranty.
THE REAL JOB
What Storage Has to Do in Parry Sound
Parry Sound is an hour and 21 minutes from our workshop at 73 Saunders Rd in Barrie, straight up Highway 400. What makes it different from the Muskoka lakes is not the drive. It is that a good share of the cottages here have no road to them at all, and everything that goes in has to cross water first.
Boat-access changes the whole build, and most quotes ignore it
Out through the 30,000 Islands a lot of places are barge or boat access only. That rules out anything that arrives as a finished carcass, because it will not fit on the boat and it will not survive the crossing. We ship flat packed and assemble on site, which is how the cabinetry gets there in the first place. Tell us at the measure that it is water access and we plan the packing around the boat.
Granite and wind mean nothing is level
Georgian Bay cottages sit on rock, and rock does not care about your floor plan. Floors move, walls lean, and a stock cabinet run put against a wall like that shows a tapering gap you cannot unsee. We measure at several heights, level off the cabinet rather than the floor, and scribe the panels. It costs a bit more time at the measure and it is the difference between fitted and nearly fitted.
Exposed shoreline is hard on materials
An open Georgian Bay shoreline gets more wind, more damp and bigger swings than a sheltered Muskoka bay. Ordinary melamine swells at the edges once it has been through enough of those cycles. In an unheated boathouse or a seasonal cottage we use a moisture-tolerant box and say so in the quote, rather than building the heated-house spec and hoping.
WHY DREAM SPACES
Why Parry Sound Homeowners Choose Dream Spaces
Most storage sold up here is a stock closet kit sized for a subdivision bedroom. It assumes a level floor, a square wall and a truck at the door. Around Parry Sound none of those are safe assumptions, so we measure the room that is actually there and plan the delivery around how you get to the place. DRIVE LINE: Our designer meets you at the cottage with the finish samples, so you see them in Georgian Bay light off the water. Parry Sound is an hour and 21 minutes from the shop, straight up the 400. MATERIAL HEADING: Built for an Exposed Shoreline MATERIAL BODY: An open Georgian Bay shoreline gets more wind and bigger humidity swings than a sheltered bay. Ordinary melamine swells at the edges after enough of those cycles, so anything unheated gets a moisture-tolerant box and we put the difference in the quote.
A Designer Comes to You
Our designer meets you at the cottage with the finish samples, so you see them in Georgian Bay light off the water. Parry Sound is an hour and 21 minutes from the shop, straight up the 400. MATERIAL HEADING: Built for an Exposed Shoreline MATERIAL BODY: An open Georgian Bay shoreline gets more wind and bigger humidity swings than a sheltered bay. Ordinary melamine swells at the edges after enough of those cycles, so anything unheated gets a moisture-tolerant box and we put the difference in the quote.
Built for Two Seasons
Half your gear is dormant six months of the year. We plan the dormant half onto deep shelves and into lidded bins, and keep the in-season half at eye level where you can reach it without moving anything else first.
Built for an Exposed Shoreline
An open Georgian Bay shoreline gets more wind and bigger humidity swings than a sheltered bay. Ordinary melamine swells at the edges after enough of those cycles, so anything unheated gets a moisture-tolerant box and we put the difference in the quote.
Homeowners Lifetime Warranty
For as long as you own the house. That matters more on a place you plan to hand to your kids than on one you expect to sell in five years.
SERVICES
What We Build in Parry Sound
Below is the full range. Around Parry Sound most of it is boathouse and entry storage, garage walls, and closets in places that shut down for the winter. We count what has to fit before drawing any of it.
HOW IT WORKS
Our Process
One team handles the job from the first measure to the last screw. Up here that matters, because we are not coordinating a subcontractor you have never met into a house you are not living in. Your designer brings the samples to you, and we deliver the flat-packed cabinetry ourselves rather than leaving you to haul it up Highway 11.
01
Consultation
We come to the house, or do it over video if you are in the city and the cottage is not. We walk the rooms, open the closets that are not working, and count what has to go back into them.
02
Custom Design
You get a rendering of the actual room at its actual dimensions. If a boathouse or a bunkie is in scope, we flag the material change here in writing, before you approve anything.
03
Professional Installation
Our own employees install it. We protect the floors, and most installs finish inside a day, so a Friday arrival does not become a weekend of noise.
04
Enjoy Your New Space
We walk it with you and load the first season in together, so you can see whether the shelf heights are right while we are still standing there.
More on Closets
Kids’ Closets That Still Work in Five Years
The closet you build for a four-year-old is wrong by nine and faintly humiliating by fourteen. Eight decisions that let a kids’ closet change with the child.
How to Read a Custom Closet Quote in Ontario
Two quotes for the same closet can land thousands apart. What drives the number, and the three construction questions that make any two quotes comparable.
COMMON QUESTIONS
Parry Sound Storage, Answered
Our cottage is boat access only. Can you still do it?
Yes, and it is worth flagging on the first call. Our cabinetry ships flat packed and gets assembled on site, so it crosses in manageable pieces rather than as finished boxes. We plan the load around your boat or the barge you use, and we schedule the install as one trip rather than several.
How far do you come up the shore?
Parry Sound itself is about an hour and 21 minutes from the shop. We regularly work Carling, Seguin, McKellar and the Killbear side. Further north than Britt starts to stretch a normal working day, so ask and we will tell you straight.
The cottage is closed from October to May. Does that matter?
It matters for materials and for what you want behind a door. A seasonal place wants closed cabinets rather than open shelving, because anything soft left on an open shelf is a mouse problem by April. We also spec the moisture-tolerant box in anything unheated.
What does a Parry Sound project cost?
Reach-in closets run $2,500 to $6,000 and a walk-in $4,000 to $10,000, with larger work from $10,000 to $20,000 and painted full-custom above that. Water access adds to the delivery side rather than the cabinetry, and we show it as its own line so you can see it.
Start Your Parry Sound Storage Project
Boathouse storage, garage walls and closets around Parry Sound all start from the same two questions: what has to fit, and where is it living now. Call 705-315-9169 or book a consultation. We also build across cottage country in Muskoka, and the full list of towns is on our Ontario service areas page.
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