Can you build a dining room hutch that looks original?

That is exactly how we approach it. We take the door and casing profiles from the room, match the stock widths and the paint register, and build the piece into the wall rather than standing it against one. The tell on a new built-in is usually that it is fancier than the house — matching the existing trim, including its plainness, is what makes it read as always having been there.

What can be done with the space beside a chimney?

Those alcoves are usually the best storage opportunity in an old farmhouse. They are the wrong depth for furniture and the right depth for shelving or cupboards, and building into them costs no floor area. Each side is normally a slightly different width, so both are measured and built individually and the reveals matched so the pair looks symmetrical.

Richmond, Macomb County, MI

Built-Ins in Richmond, MI

Name: Maceri Woodworking
Address: 33628 Bayview Dr, Chesterfield, MI, 48047, US
Telephone: (586) 823-2887
Price range: $$

Farmhouses were built with built-ins before the term existed — a hutch in the dining room, a bench in the back hall, shelving beside the chimney, a pantry with fixed shelves. Most Richmond houses have lost at least one of them to a remodel, and putting them back is the work that makes an old house feel whole again.

The dining room hutch or built-in sideboard is the piece people most often want returned. In a house of this period it belongs in the wall rather than against it, with a lower cabinet, a counter and glazed or open upper shelving, built in a plain register with square stock and simple glazing bars. The second is the chimney alcove: nearly every one of these houses has a stack with dead space either side of it, and shelving or cupboards built into those alcoves use volume that furniture cannot. Then there is the back hall bench, which on a property with any land at all is not decorative — it is where boots, coats and farm gear have to go, and it wants a hard-wearing top, hooks at working height, and open cubbies below that can be hosed of mud rather than upholstered. In the newer houses around town we build the modern range: office walls, entertainment units and window seats. The rule in the old houses is restraint, because a built-in that is more elaborate than the room's original trim announces itself as new.

We take the existing trim profiles as the reference for anything built into an older Richmond house, so a new piece sits in the same register as the woodwork around it. Built and finished at our Chesterfield shop.

Richmond is a straight run north from our Chesterfield shop up M-19, close enough that we work there regularly.

Built-Ins questions from Richmond homeowners

Can you build a dining room hutch that looks original?: That is exactly how we approach it. We take the door and casing profiles from the room, match the stock widths and the paint register, and build the piece into the wall rather than standing it against one. The tell on a new built-in is usually that it is fancier than the house — matching the existing trim, including its plainness, is what makes it read as always having been there.
What can be done with the space beside a chimney?: Those alcoves are usually the best storage opportunity in an old farmhouse. They are the wrong depth for furniture and the right depth for shelving or cupboards, and building into them costs no floor area. Each side is normally a slightly different width, so both are measured and built individually and the reveals matched so the pair looks symmetrical.