Do these wardrobes smell inside?

Old furniture often carries a faint, stale scent from decades of stored clothing and household dust settling into the unpolished interior wood. You can usually freshen them up. Wiping the interior down with a mild wood soap and leaving the doors open in a dry room helps clear the air.

My bedroom has a really low ceiling with a picture rail, so will a Victorian wardrobe be too tall to stand upright in there?

Most large nineteenth-century examples stand over two metres tall, as they were built for rooms with generous ceiling heights. The cornice section often adds significant height at the very top. You need to measure your clearance carefully. Remember that you also need a few extra centimetres of ceiling height to lift the separate cornice up and drop it onto the main carcase during assembly.

Can I paint burr walnut?

Paint struggles to grip a traditional French-polished surface. The slick finish normally requires heavy sanding and chemical primers before modern paint will adhere. Covering a burr veneer hides the main feature that defined the piece.

The doors on the wardrobe I am looking at online have these long cracks running vertically down the front, is that a structural problem?

Vertical lines in the surface usually indicate shrinkage in the solid timber beneath the veneer. Changes in central heating dry out old wood, causing the underlying boards to contract and pull the veneer with them. This is mostly a cosmetic issue rather than a structural failure. The door frames themselves usually remain solid, though the surface tension cracks are a standard reaction to modern dry interiors.

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Antique Burr Wardrobes

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These large wooden storage cupboards feature swirling, highly figured exterior veneers cut from tree growths, built originally to hang and store clothing in bedrooms before built-in closets became standard.