UKC

Another boring home improvements question for the UKDIY hive mind...

We live in a Sheffield mid-terrace, with the standard room at the front / room at the back configuration and the front room fireplace in the middle of the partition wall. This creates alcoves either side of the chimney breast, which are obvious places to put built-in cabinets / shelves.

One concern is that if we stuck a cabinet in the alcove between the chimney breast and the front wall of the house, then one end of it would be against an outside wall, and (from previous experience) I'm very leery about having anything restricting airflow around outside walls for reasons of condensation / damp / mould. Is this a reasonable concern? Are there steps that can be taken to mitigate it? Or is it not really an issue? It seems like it'd be an expensive mistake to make in more ways than one...

If it makes any difference, the walls are solid (no cavity) and the house has typically unimproved-Victorian-terrace levels of cold-and-draughtiness in the winter.

Mount cabinets on vertical battens to space them from the wall for air flow?

Dot and dab insulated plasterboard has solved the condensation on my outside walls, although I do have cavity walls so harder for any penetrating damp to get behind the plasterboard and cause mold.

Everyone puts storage in alcoves .. if you concerned about condensation you could allow for ventilation in the units- I built some with similar concerns that finished shy of the ceiling that allowed for some air flow.

Yeah, that's kind of the impression that I got so I was hoping for a load of people saying yep, I just put them in without a second thought and haven't had any problems.

Yeah, I was thinking about that, too. It'd probably be book shelves at the top and a cupboard at the bottom - seems like it should be easy enough to allow some ventilation through the cupboard.

Thanks all!