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Painted & Glazed Bookshelves |
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Painted & Glazed Bookshelves |
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(Click any photo for a close-up view)
(Click any photo for a close-up view)
These expansive bookshelf and display cabinets combine rich caramel-colored maple upper sections with painted and glazed base cabinets that offer plenty of enclosed storage. Designed to occupy an alcove/overhang area running the full length of this 20-foot long wall, the completed cabinets provided a sense of "completeness" to the great room in this beautiful home. On the right side of the long wall, the cabinet design was tailored to seamlessly integrate with the window located in that area. A small seating surface was created in front of the window, with the notion of adding pillows or cushions for comfort, along with open display shelving for decorative objects or plants that can take advantage of the natural lighting.
In order to insure the cabinets would fully blend in with the aesthetics of the room, the paint used on the cabinets was colored matched to the "Restrained Gold" color used on the walls. However, as the photos show, the final cabinetry color was a "shade" darker than the walls due to the application of the accent glaze added to all the painted portions of the cabinetry. So while the cabinets blend beautifully in with the surrounding room color, they don't become monochromatic because the glaze lends a nuance and character to their final appearance. The dark Van Dyke brown glaze also helps the Restrained Gold color reflect the darker brown tones of the stained maple upper cabinets.
What also makes this cabinet installation quite unique is what you can't see in the photos.... Namely, there is an extensive amount of fully integrated wiring embedded within nearly every section of cabinetry. The center section of base cabinets is designed to house the AV components of a home theater system, and thus has slide-out AV racks (with cable bridges for easy wiring access) as well as inter-cabinet conduits and through-the-floor conduits to facilitate easy wiring. Cooling fans in those AV base cabinets vent the warm air created by the electronic components into surrounding wall cavities. Routed throughout all the upper cabinets are numerous wires and controls for a multi-zone lighting system that includes small halogen lights in the cabinet top panels as well as linear lighting components along the inner edges of the display cabinet face-frames. And finally, numerous electrical outlets are concealed with the cabinetry to provide power for the AV systems, shelf decorations, etc.
The top row of photos shows the completed cabinets following installation. The second row depicts the cabinets once they were fully decorated. The bottom row shows the cabinets with the completed accent lighting and showing the various home theater components installed. Following the completion of the cabinetry, a matching heavy duty slide-out TV stand was installed in the center section, which can accommodate a large flat-panel or rear-projection TV weighing up to 300 pounds. By sliding out the stand, the TV can be rotated and viewed from other angles in the room, or wiring changes can be easily made. The base of this slide-out module was designed to conceal a center-channel surround-sound speaker (behind a color-matched speaker grill) and also provides media storage compartments on either side of the center speaker section.
This large expanse of cabinets measures over 20 feet long, 9 feet tall, and 2 feet deep.
For other bookshelf installations, please visit the Bookshelves & Built-Ins page. To see other traditionally styled projects, please visit the Traditional page.
Cabinet pricing is dependent on a wide variety of factors that can drastically alter the final cost. Cabinet quantities/sizes, material selection, construction methods, accessories, and finishes all impact the pricing. The painted and glazed bookcase cabinets shown on this page cost approximately $14,000, including materials, labor, and installation, along with extensive work on concealed wiring for the home theater and cabinet lighting systems. The subsequent addition of the matching slide-out flat panel TV stand was $700 more.