Custom built-in shelving and window bench, Calgary NW
Some collections deserve more than a shelf in a closet. When our clients in Calgary NW came to us with a lifetime’s worth of heirloom pottery — pieces with real sentimental weight, passed down and collected over the years — they didn’t want it boxed away. They wanted to live with it, see it every day, and have guests take it in the moment they walked into the room.
That request became the starting point for one of our favourite custom built-in projects this year: a full-wall display shelving unit paired with a window bench that quietly does triple duty as a reading nook, a storage bench, and extra seating for the dining table
The room before we began — a dining space with real potential, but no dedicated place for the client’s pottery collection.
The window nook, before: a couple of chairs and a side table doing their best, but not making full use of the space
Project Scope
Before any material was cut, we sat down with the clients to define exactly what this built-in needed to accomplish. Three objectives guided every decision from there:
- Create an open display for a heirloom pottery collection — one that shows the pieces off rather than crowding them.
- Integrate seamlessly with the existing architecture of the room, so the new structure reads as if it always belonged there.
- Build a functional window bench that works as a reading nook, hidden storage, and overflow seating for the adjacent dining table.
Open shelving was the obvious choice for the display wall — closed cabinetry would have
defeated the whole purpose of showing the collection off. But open shelving only works if the proportions and spacing are right, which meant a lot of early planning around shelf heights and cubby sizes to fit pieces of very different scales, from small bowls to tall vases.
Prepping the Space
Before the new millwork could go in, the room needed to be cleared and protected. Existing furniture came out, floors were covered, and the walls were prepped for the new structure to be anchored directly into the framing.
With the room emptied out, the scale of the window recess became obvious — and it’s exactly what let us build a deeper bench without encroaching too much into the dining room floor space.
Materials and Construction
Since the finished piece was always going to be painted rather than stained, we built the entire structure out of MDF. MDF takes paint far better than plywood or solid wood, with none of the visible grain telegraphing through a finish coat, and it stays dimensionally stable over time — important for a piece this size that needs to keep its lines straight for years to come.
For the shelves themselves, we used 1” thick stock rather than a thinner standard shelf. Pottery is heavier and more concentrated in its weight than books, so we wanted zero flex or sag once the collection was loaded in, especially on the longer shelf spans.
The MDF shelving unit starting to take shape, section by section.
Solving the Corner
One of the trickiest parts of this design was the transition on the left-hand side of the room, where the built-in meets an adjacent wall. A hard 90° edge there would have looked abrupt and drawn the eye in the wrong way. Instead, we built a section of curved shelves into that corner, softening the transition and letting the structure blend into the room.
That curve became one of our favourite design details in the finished piece — it also happens to be a great showcase spot for smaller, sculptural pottery pieces that benefit from being seen from adjacent kitchen.
Building the Window Bench
The room already had a recessed window nook. That extra depth let us build a genuinely deep bench — 27” deep at the window — without the piece encroaching on the living space. Where the bench runs along the walls to the left and right, it steps down to a much slimmer 15” depth matching the depth of the shelving unit, while keeping the overall footprint in the room minimal.
Inside, the bench storage is divided into three equal-sized compartments, each with its own hinged top. Splitting the storage into thirds meant each lid panel could be a manageable, well-supported size, and it lets the family compartmentalize what’s stored underneath instead of digging through one big bin.
Construction complete and ready for paint
The Finish
To make sure the built-in read as part of the room rather than a piece dropped into it, the paint was colour-matched to the home’s existing door casing trim: Sherwin-Williams 7004 256-C2 in a satin finish.
Once the custom built-in was complete, our friends at The Urban Painter came in and spray-finished the entire unit on site over two days. Spraying gave the piece a smooth finish.
The finished piece, painted and styled with the client’s collection. What was once a bare wall is now the focal point of the room.
The Result
This was a genuinely fun project to see through from an empty wall to a finished feature.
Every shelf height, every cubby size, and the curve of that corner run were all decided with the client’s pottery pieces in mind. The result is a display the clients can walk past, add to, and rearrange for years, plus a window bench that’s just as likely to hold a stack of books as it is a guest at dinner.
If you’re thinking about a custom built-in for your own Calgary home — whether it’s a displayfor a collection, a window bench, or a full built-in wall unit — we’d love to hear about it.
Contact us today to talk through what’s possible in your space