Reading Nook

This is a project I have wanted to do from day one in our home. I love the fact that Parker gets excited to climb up and look through his books. And that he’s got a cozy spot to hang out in while we’re getting ready for the day or if he’s not feeling well. The fact that it was able to help me get rid of two more bifold doors AND makes my hallway feel wider? This genuinely may be my favorite project we’ve done.

These are the infamous bifold doors. I get why people have them, especially in narrow spots. But I had seven sets of them. Now down to 5 lol Probably going to be stuck with those ones. The biggest thing for me was protecting my littles from pinches fingers, which is what those two plastic pieces at the top are for. Love a good baby proofing hack.

After we got all of the shelves out, you can see it’s actually a pretty good sized space. The side on the left was a weird shape, so that made each step take some extra thought on how to make it work, but I figured it out! And I actually don’t mind it now, because it have extra room on the shelves.

The biggest thing about this base is that I needed it to be sturdy. Knowing my kids would jump on it, knowing adults would lay on it, it needed to be able to hold weight. We made sure to attach everything into studs, used pocket screws for the first time, which I loved, and then used several 2x4’s and on their side when possible to give it extra strength.

I was originally planning on making this a storage bench, but between the risk for pinched fingers and the thought of Parker trapping his sister inside and sitting on top of it, we opted to just skip it for now. LOL

This was my first time using shiplap that has the remade spacers (shocking I know!), and I loved how easy it was. But gosh it was much more expensive than my plywood option! Only going to reserve that for small spaces! This only required 2-3 pieces!

We then decided on sheets of beadboard for the back wall. It was also 1000x easier to paint everything before installing the shelves. Ideally I would have painted the shelves before putting them in too, because laying down to paint the underside was not my jam.

The next step was figuring out where to put my supports. There wasn’t really a consistency with the studs in my space so after I had marked them, I added 2x4’s for the shelves to hook into. Since the books could potentially be heavy, the whole design of this project was to be sturdy. Once these were painted though, they all but disappear in the shadows.

The only thing I would change about this is after seeing it, a thicker front board to better hide the 2x4 underneath. But I wanted to leave plenty of space for the heights of the books. So My advice would be to space the shelves apart a little more to allow for that. Someday it wouldn’t be a big deal, but kids books are all over the place in size.

It’s always fun to freak people out with adding things like this when they can’t see the vision in my head. I’m like trust me, just wait!

I cannot tell you how excited Parker was. He wanted to sleep there the first night, but we don’t quite trust him to be roaming the halls. We added lights under each of the bookshelves and the “magic” puck light trick in the light fixture. I would like to have an overhead light officially wired, which should be semi easy since there is attic access, but that’s something out of my skill set, so that will come eventually!

I am just so happy with how this turned out, and am so pleased to have a dedicated space to hopefully foster my kids love of reading. Plus I can’t wait to curl up here with a good book!