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Home Decorating Design Dilemma dining room

Painting built-in?

6 years ago

We have a late-1920's house in Seattle that has an enchanting exterior, but had lost most of the interior charm when we bought it 25+ years ago. We've gradually finished/refinished various areas, and in the upstairs bedrooms and hallway we added several built-ins: dressers (both maple), bookcases (mahogany and pine), linen closets and display cabinets (poplar and ash). All of the woodwork, upstairs and down, is painted, so we've painted the built-ins as well. Each of them has a woodwork frame around them, so they truly look like built-ins, not pre-builts sitting in an alcome.

Now we are down to the last built-in planned: a china hutch in the dining room. I have been looking on-line for a suitable used one. Options are limited to a maximum width of 36 inches. Now I think I've found one that will work for $99, but it is solid cherry. My husband's immediate reaction was "great, we'll refinish it". Huh? You mean we'll only paint the woodwork that frames around it? No, his idea is to open the wall, build an alcove to fit, and slide it into place.

So my first question is one of aesthetics: he's suddenly talking about a little alcove without a frame to match every other door, window, or other odd opening in the house. Opinions?

Related to that, we may need to run a baseboard across, because I sincerely doubt that the maple floor will turn out to extend beyond the wall. That raises the second question:

if we have to ha a painted baseboard and "frame" around the china hutch, how will it look to have an unpainted "built-in" in a home where the fireplace surround, woodwork, doors, and other half-dozen built-ins are all painted?

Thanks for any design advice you can give!

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Comments (4)

Sammie J
6 years ago
pictures of the area would be very helpful.
AprilShowers thanked Sammie J
Diane
6 years ago
Can you post photos of what you have and what you are considering with the new piece?
AprilShowers thanked Diane
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jay06
6 years ago
I don't think it will look "built-in" unless it's painted in the same color as the trim and other built-ins. What's behind the wall in which you want to create an alcove for it? Are you sure there's enough room to accommodate the depth of the hutch?
AprilShowers thanked jay06
AprilShowers
Original Author
6 years ago
Hi jboling,

Thanks for your thoughts! It's helpful to get some other opinions since my husband and I are on different sides on this one! The original plan was a built-in, but because of the cherry wood (not stain) on this he suddenly switched to "make an alcove", not a built-in. I generally agree with him that true cherry, walnut, maple, etc. shouldn't be painted if it's in good shape. But I'm looking for nice lines, specific measurements, and inexpensive...... in this case I can probably live with it placed in an untrimmed alcove IF the flooring can be easily solved. The cabinet has 4-5 inch legs, so the flooring would show if it is not done as a built-in.

The dining room is small--roughly 9' x 9.5', and our family is large, which is why we've avoided placing furniture other than spare chairs along the walls.

We did verify the void behind this wall when the opposite side (back side?) was opened for our kitchen remodel. This is the last step in that project. The kitchen itself was finished in November 2012. In 2015 we did the second stage of the project, which was to enclose an existing back porch as a mudroom, and poured a new concrete porch and stairs. The stairs now access both the backyard and the driveway, whereas before they only went to the back.

A venting chimney is what creates the void along the rest of that wall. It was too expensive to remove/rerun vents elsewhere. The void is 42" long, but I don't want the hutch, built in or not, to abutt the adjacent wall, hence the 36 inch max width, which would allow wallboard and trim dimensions to match other near-corner openings in the room.

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