Atlantic Construction Co.: Built-In Library
Norwich, VT · 2026
Location
Norwich, VT
Client
HNW homeowner
Year
2026
Services
Studio + Millwork
A two-story home library with floor-to-ceiling shelving, a rolling ladder, and a hidden door to a back office. Belle Vie scanned the space, designed the geometry around an awkward post in the room's center, milled the entire run in white oak, and installed over four days.
How it's made
- 1
Scan
Full-room LiDAR including the awkward post
- 2
Design
Shelves wrap the post in a way that makes it intentional
- 3
Mill
9 sections, white oak with brass rod ladder track
- 4
Install
4 days, two installers
Atlantic Construction Co.: Built-In Library
The challenge: an L-shaped library room with a structural post landing roughly in its center. Most cabinetmakers we'd talked to wanted to box the post in. Belle Vie's design wraps the shelving around it, turning the post into a vertical accent that anchors the long run of cases.
What Belle Vie did
- LiDAR scan of the room, including the post
- Design that uses the post as a divider between two distinct shelf sections
- Mill in our shop, all white oak with mitered casework
- Install with brass rolling ladder hardware
What was hard
The post wasn't square (out by about 8mm at the top). The scan caught it; the design accounted for it; the mill compensated for it. The brass ladder track required precise alignment to a non-square reference; we set it from the floor, not the post.
Project gallery
The post we had to design around
Rendering: the post becomes a feature, not an obstacle
Final install with the rolling ladder
Materials
- White oak
- Brass ladder hardware
- Honed walnut tops
“We came to Belle Vie because the space had a post nobody else wanted to touch. They turned it into the focal point of the room.”
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