Winchester Built-In Mudroom

Winchester, CA

Location

Winchester, CA

Materials

Domestic maple plywood boxes, hard maple face frames and Shaker doors in Sherwin-Williams Emerald Urethane; miter-folded rift-sawn white oak bench and shelf in Rubio Monocoat Oil Plus 2C Natural; hand-built slat wall in Sherwin-Williams Tricorn Black; brass coat hooks and bar pulls

Timeline

4 days on site (2 carpentry, 2 paint), plus 4 days of shop fabrication

Investment

$8,901

The Investment

$8,901

Turn-key total

4 days on site (2 carpentry, 2 paint), plus 4 days of shop fabrication

Start to finish, on site.

What drove the cost

Hand-drawn design, field measure, and layout
Shop-built maple boxes, hard maple face frames, and Shaker doors
Miter-folded rift-sawn white oak bench and shelf with a Rubio Monocoat finish
Hand-built black slat wall, including the client mockup
Installation and scribing the face frame to an out-of-square niche
Two days of Sherwin-Williams Emerald Urethane paint, including touch-up
Brass coat hooks and bar pulls
Not included: baskets, electrical or lighting work, and flooring or wall paint outside the niche

The price is all-inclusive: design, materials, build, paint, and final detailing.

The story

How this project came together.

A fully custom mudroom built into a garage-entry niche just under four feet wide: painted maple cubbies, a miter-folded white oak bench and shelf, a hand-built black slat wall, brass hooks, and a closed Shaker upper cabinet.

In this house the garage door is the real front door, and the path in runs through a small niche just under four feet wide. The family had a flimsy store-bought unit there that was never meant to be permanent and was falling apart. The kids' shoes ended up wherever they came off, and the backpacks had no home at the door they actually use.

This mudroom was drawn at the same drafting table, at the same time, as the fireplace wall in the same house. You can see the mudroom from the kitchen, so the white oak, the black slats and the brass all carry from one piece to the other. Because the homeowners made every decision for both pieces at once, the plan was locked before the first cut and nothing changed mid-job.

The niche itself was the hard part. It was out of square, and the upper section was much worse than the lower, which is a lot for an opening under four feet wide. The face frame had to be scribed to the walls, meaning the wall's actual shape was traced onto the frame and cut to match. The gaps ended up tight and the cabinetry reads plumb even though the walls around it are not.

Nothing off the shelf looked right for the slats, so Brian built a small mockup to show the homeowners the spacing and profile before committing. They approved it and the full wall was built to match, set dead plumb off a laser line. Other than the brass hooks, there is not a single off-the-shelf part in this mudroom.

One more honest note. Emerald Urethane takes longer than most paints to reach full hardness, and painter's tape applied to touch up the oak lifted a quarter-sized spot of paint down to the primer. The painter came back, filled the divot, sanded it smooth, blended it and repainted. Now we wait longer before any tape touches fresh enamel.