Long-Awaited Nook

When I was working on my kitchen in 2019, I did some exploratory demo to see if I could add a 1920's style phone niche to the wall between our kitchen and dining room.  It runs along the buffet, and turned out, there was a deep enough cavity to easily add one!  There was a phone jack in this wall when we bought the house, so I knew there was some kind of cavity.  After some demo-excitement, we lived basically with a huge hole in the wall for three years.  I had started the casing for the bottom of the niche, but didn't get much farther after electrical went into the side of it.  

I declared 2022 the year of finished projects in our house, so I started with this one, and wrapped it up several weeks ago (technology issues hit me hard then! But I'm back.).  Starting with this one really has given me a decent amount of momentum to keep going with other things this year. 

Getting the niche done has been a huge change in function for our house too!  When we demoed the last kitchen, we lost our typical stash space for things like keys and our wallets.  This is the perfect space.  We also gained a nice spot to charge our phones and tablets.  I added two receptacles to this niche, one with on-board USB outlets.  Since our adjacent dining room only has one outlet, this can easily add power where we need it there too.  

Through the day, it really helps us keep our things in check.  Since it's the one spot that's easy to access whether coming from the front door or kitchen door, we can grab the "Key Three" -wallet, phone, and keys- on the way out the door without any last-minute searches.  Plus, the door to the bottom compartment holds our main planning calendar while keeping little hands away.  

When I added the shelf above the door, I was very conscious of making it only partial depth.  This makes it really easy to set something down to charge without closing it behind the door or having cords come out of the door with it on the top shelf.  The little shelf also brings in the proportion of the wainscoting in the kitchen to the proportions of the dining room buffet.  The bottom of the door is the same height as the buffet counter, the shelf meets the wainscoting, and the top shelf is at the same level as the buffet pilasters.  It transitions the spaces together really nicely.

While our house didn't come with one of these "antiquated quirks," I'm really glad we were able to add one to our house.  Not only does it give us some extra period-appropriate style, it really serves some modern functionality too.  Just what we needed in our busy household.