Custom Millwork

What counts as millwork made for one room

Millwork is the shaped, finished woodwork in a house, and custom millwork is the part that cannot be bought ready-made. A mantel sized to a particular firebox and wall. Panels laid out to a room's windows and doors. Columns at a cased opening. Window and door surrounds with a header and backband that match the front hall. Each piece is drawn for its spot, then made and fitted there.

It sits between two neighboring kinds of work. Storage built-ins, like bookcases and window seats, have their own page because the cabinet construction is the main question there. Trim installation is mostly about casing and base you can get at a lumberyard. Custom millwork is for the details that give a room its character, where a stock profile would look wrong.

Most of the custom millwork we do happens inside a bigger remodel: an addition that should feel like the old house, a room opened up that needs columns at its new edges, or a family room that finally gets the mantel it was missing. It can also be a project on its own, when a room has good bones and nothing on the walls to show for it.

Matching original trim that is no longer made

Older Massachusetts houses often have casing, baseboard, crown and chair rail profiles nobody manufactures anymore. When a wall is moved, a window replaced or an addition built, the new trim has to match the old, and a near-match from a catalog stands out the moment it is painted next to the original. We take the exact profile from an existing piece, sometimes from a closet or a section removed during demolition, and have cutters ground to reproduce it.

Matching goes beyond shape. Species matters if the trim is stained, and the old-growth wood in an older house is denser and tighter-grained than most lumber sold today. Painted trim is more forgiving, but the reveal at the edge of a casing and the height of the base still have to line up with the rooms next door. When original trim comes off for reuse, every piece is labeled with where it came from so it goes back in the same place.

In a house built before 1978, original trim may carry lead paint, and removing, stripping or cutting it follows lead-safe work practices.

For a large paneled room, we may build one bay first so you can see it on the wall before the rest is made.

Mantels and fireplace surrounds

A fireplace is the focal point of any room that has one, and a mantel that is too small, too shallow or the wrong style for the house is hard to ignore. A custom mantel is drawn to the firebox, the hearth, the ceiling height and the wall behind it. It can be a simple shelf on corbels, a full surround with pilasters and a frieze, or an overmantel that carries paneling up to the ceiling. Proportion is what most stock mantels get wrong: the shelf height against the opening and the overall width against the wall.

Fire safety sets some of the dimensions. The building code requires clearance between combustible materials, like a wood mantel or trim, and the firebox opening, with limits on how far wood can project close to the opening. Gas inserts and wood stoves add their own manufacturer clearances. We confirm those before the design is set, so the mantel you approve is one that can actually go in front of your fireplace.

Material choice matters around heat. A mantel above a fireplace that is used every winter night sees far more temperature swing than trim on an interior wall, so we pick stable stock, leave room for movement in the joinery, and fasten to the framing behind the surround rather than to the face of brick or tile. Any stone or tile in the surround is coordinated with the woodwork so the reveals line up.

Paneled walls, columns and window surrounds

Full-height paneling in a library, study or dining room is laid out to the room. Panel widths are adjusted so the stiles land at the corners, beside the windows and around outlets in a pattern that looks planned rather than cut to fit. Walls in older houses are rarely flat or plumb, so the panel frame is scribed and shimmed to sit tight against plaster that wanders.

Columns at a cased opening, often where a wall came out between two rooms, can be purely decorative or can wrap a structural post. When they wrap a post, the structure is sized first and the column is built around it. Window and door surrounds, with headers, crossheads and backbands, are often how an older room gets its detail back after replacement windows went in with thin stock casing.

Coffered ceilings, ceiling beams and cove moldings follow the same approach and are covered on our ceiling modifications page.

Drawings, samples and sign-off before anything is cut

Custom work that comes out wrong has to be made again, so we spend the time up front. Each piece is drawn with dimensions, the profiles are shown to you at full size, and anything stained gets a finish sample on the actual species. You sign off on the drawing and the sample before material is cut. For a large paneled room, we may build one bay first so you can see it on the wall before the rest is made.

Changes still happen once a room is real rather than on paper: a panel layout that looks different with the furniture in place, or a mantel shelf you want a little deeper. When that happens, we stop, redraw the piece, give you the price of the change in writing, and go ahead only with your okay. It is the same process we use on every part of a remodel.

Wood needs time in the house before it is installed, especially through a New England winter when the heat dries everything out. We bring material in to acclimate so joints stay closed through the seasons. Installation comes last, with joints coped, scribed and glued, nail holes filled and the finish brought up to match the room. Customers put the standard this way: "If its not right; Steve wont put his name on it!" With millwork, that standard is something you see every day.

See the rest of our structural work, or browse the gallery for rooms we have finished.