Can you build a window seat with a radiator under the window?

Yes, and it is the usual situation in these houses. The radiator is housed inside the seat in a way that still lets it convect properly, normally with a grilled front and an open path above, so you keep the heat and gain the seat. It has to be built to the actual bay and the actual radiator, which is why it is not something that can be bought.

Will built-in shelving match my existing woodwork?

That is the point of building it rather than buying it. We take the cornice, base, stile widths and reveal from the room's original millwork and construct to match, so the case reads as part of the house. In a room with surviving period detail, shelving that ignores those profiles is the thing everyone notices first.

St Clair, St Clair County, MI

Built-Ins in St Clair, MI

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

The houses along the river in St Clair were built to look at the water, and the built-in that matters most here is the one that lets you sit in a window and do it. Window seats, bay seating and library shelving are the pieces we are asked for most.

A window seat in a bay is a deceptively particular job. The bay angles are rarely the neat ones on a plan, the sill height sets the seat height whether it is comfortable or not, and there is usually a radiator that has to be housed rather than removed. Done properly the seat is built to the actual bay, the radiator gets a grilled housing that still lets it work, and the storage under the seat opens in a way that clears the cushion. The second piece is library and study shelving, which suits these houses because the rooms have the height for it — full-height cases with a proper cornice and base, built in the same register as the room's existing millwork. Alcoves either side of a chimney breast take the same treatment and use space nothing else can. In the formal rooms we also build sideboards and cabinetry into panelled dados so the joinery becomes part of the wall scheme rather than furniture standing in front of it. The constraint throughout is matching: in a house whose value is its original woodwork, a new piece that ignores the existing profiles is a subtraction.

Every piece takes its profiles from the room it goes in. Built and finished at our Chesterfield shop, then installed scribed to walls that are unlikely to be plumb, because in these houses they rarely are.

St Clair is about twenty-one miles from our Chesterfield shop, well inside the area we cover along the river.

Built-Ins questions from St Clair homeowners

Can you build a window seat with a radiator under the window?: Yes, and it is the usual situation in these houses. The radiator is housed inside the seat in a way that still lets it convect properly, normally with a grilled front and an open path above, so you keep the heat and gain the seat. It has to be built to the actual bay and the actual radiator, which is why it is not something that can be bought.
Will built-in shelving match my existing woodwork?: That is the point of building it rather than buying it. We take the cornice, base, stile widths and reveal from the room's original millwork and construct to match, so the case reads as part of the house. In a room with surviving period detail, shelving that ignores those profiles is the thing everyone notices first.