Built-ins that look original

Where built-ins earn their keep

The best built-ins go where the house already has an awkward space. The dead wall at the end of a hall, the gap beside a fireplace, the wide landing at the top of the stairs, the shallow nook under it. In an older Alamo Heights house that space is usually a full inch deeper at one end than the other, which is why we template in the room instead of building to a drawing and hoping.

Closets are the other half of this work. A builder closet is one rod and one shelf, and the top half of the room does nothing at all. We fit drawers, double hang, shoe shelves and a hamper into that same footprint, all of it plywood with a finished edge instead of melamine that chips the first time a hanger catches it.

• Bookcases and fireplace surrounds, scribed to the wall
• Window seats with drawers or a lift lid
• Mudroom lockers with hooks and a bench
• Closet drawers, double hang rods and shoe shelves
• Desk and homework nooks built into a wall

Matching a house that already has trim

An older San Antonio house has trim you cannot buy at a big box store. Baseboard with a bead on it, casing with a back band, picture rail at eight feet. A new bookcase that meets that trim with a plain square edge gets noticed from the doorway. We copy the profile on a shaper, run new stock to match it, and die the new work into the old.

Plaster decides the rest of the job. A plaster wall over wood lath is never flat, so the face frame gets scribed to it and the filler gets cut where it stands. That takes longer than screwing a cabinet to a stud and calling it finished. It is also the whole difference between a built-in and a bookcase shoved against a wall.