The Birth and Life of the "nook"

For those who live in small homes, you know how valuable additional storage can be. For those who live in historic homes, you know even more! Historic homes often have strange layouts; nooks and crannies that seem to make no sense. Truthfully, each nook and cranny had a purpose at one time. Most historic homes are really quilted together with decades of additions, subtractions, mistakes and successes. 

Our historic home has a huge foyer. The foyer is large enough that it could be a room all on its own. Rather than waste this space as simply a pretty entryway, I decided that we needed something attractive and functional to help utilize the space. So...here comes what we lovingly refer to as "the nook".  The nook idea sprang from an article I found in Better Homes and Gardens (cliche', I know).  Here is the page I tore out of the January 2012 issue:

And here is our version:

The nook is probably one of my favorite interior features of our house. Chris cut all the wood and painted it outside, assembled it and then brought it in. Theoretically, the nook is 'built in' to the wall but it can be removed.  We then painted the wall behind the nook, (Behr: "Mocha Latte") to match the color of our living room. The hooks are just plain 'ole hooks from Hobby Lobby. The trim came from Lowes.

The bench is a refinished, sealed piece of wood we found at an antique mall. It was not intended to necessarily be used for a bench. It was just unfinished wood with some bark still left on it. The bench is one of my favorite things about the nook. It is both beautiful and functional. I find myself perching on the bench often to put on my shoes in the morning.

Here is the finished (and functional) nook. You will often find our pets modeling for you in our posts.

The nook has become home to our boots, hats, books and umbrellas. It is sort of a catch-all for busy lives. Everyone needs a space like this in their home.

The nook really is like a little
mini mud room
...but prettier.----->













All in all, the nook was a pretty budget-friendly project. The wood for the bench was a lucky antique store find, refinished to look pretty. The wood for the rest of the project was a little costly, but certainly not as costly as it would have been to purchase something like this.  The most expensive part of the project was the edging for the shelves and the decorative additions to the sides of the book. This is certainly not something that we had to add to it, but it did make all the difference in the way it looked in the end. This is a project, like all of our projects, that we didn't actually have instructions or a plan for from the beginning. This is something we found a concept for, adjusted, and built after drawing it out.