A wall of books with a radiator in the middle

The client wanted the whole wall for books. The problem was the radiator, sitting right in the middle of it.

Moving a radiator means a plumber and new pipework. Building round it costs nothing extra if you plan for it from the start. So the radiator stayed, and the bookcase was designed around it.

What makes a radiator cover work

Most radiator covers you can buy are a box with a grille on the front. They look fine, but they can trap a lot of heat. A built-in one can do better:

• Space around it. Warm air rises. If it cannot get out of the cover, it just sits in the box. The middle bay is framed with room all round the radiator.
• A proper grille. The doors are mostly holes, so heat comes out of the front as well.
• Doors, not a fixed panel. Radiators need bleeding and valves need turning. Both grille doors open, so you can get at everything without taking anything apart.

Day one: uprights

The tall uprights went in first, one each side of the radiator. Everything else in the wall is measured from those two.

Every board was cut from a printed sheet plan clipped to the bench. On a job this size, that is the difference between three sheets left over and a trip back to the yard. I wrote about planning cut lists a while back.

Day two: shelves and bases

Frames round the radiator, shelves into all three bays, cupboard bases fronted. The laser goes up on a pole so the shelves line up across all three bays.

By the end of the second day it already looked like a bookcase.

Day three: doors

Doors on the cupboards either side and the grille doors over the radiator. The applied moulding that makes the panels on the cupboard doors went on when I came back to finish.

The radiator did not move an inch. The bookcase did all the work.

It is all MDF, ready for the decorator. Once it is painted and full of books, the grille will be the only clue there is a radiator there at all.

See every photo of this job.