I think anybody with children can relate to the need for a dedicated “drop zone” or school supply area! As our two boys have now entered grade school, our kitchen dining table has become the new homework and coloring station. With crayons, papers, laptops and backpacks scattered everywhere I have been itching to create an area that can accommodate all of these things but appear to not! You know I love a good hidden storage space and having this in the main area of our house it is definitely going to be just that.
So let me explain the plan for my next project, a built in on the back wall of our dining with hidden pull out desks for both my boys! This will be done similar to the bookcases I built out of wall cabinets in my studio/office renovation.
I don’t have the entire plan figured out, but I definitely know I want to add a pop of color other than green in my main living space. Recently, I did a feature wall on the adjacent side of this room and changed out all of my family room furniture, adding in small touches of denim blue. I thought this would be a good color to tie into these built-ins. Below you can see the the sample color choices I am picking between all of which are from Dunn-Edwards Dura.
Below are the samples I received. The first are paint cards I taped on the south facing wall in our house and the bottom 2 pictures are the larger peel and stick samples on the east facing wall. I love being able to change the sample locations to really see what works best in the space in different lighting. Also having them up for a couple days lets you live with them and see how the different lighting throughout your day effects them.
With that said, I have narrowed it down to the 3rd, 4th and 5th colors shown below.
While I keep thinking on that portion, let me tell you what I plan on using for at least the bottom portion of this build. Since this space is so close to my kitchen, I feel like I have to stay with the same style cabinets rather than changing them up to a more modern shaker style. So I will be using stock ready made, unfinished cabinets like the ones below. I do have a fun twist for these and will make a few alterations to fit our needs.
I still am playing around with how I will configure them all but pretty positive I will use the 60″ cabinet as an anchor in the middle. From their I will place a 24″ wide cabinet on either side. Followed by possibly either a 12″ or 18″ cabinet on both ends.
The difficult part of this layout is that one side can butt up to the wall like any built in would. However on the left side it goes to the hangover bar seat from the kitchen. I want this to appear as its own feature yet an extension of the kitchen. Symmetry is usually key with a good looking built in. One possible solution I may do, is use the smaller 12″ cabinets on the ends and create a rounded edge on the outer edges of them as if it was on purpose to have it stop. Similar to what is below.
So all this planning and talking about designs, I bet you are ready to see what the space currently looks like? It is messy. It is ugly. It is in need of this organization and beauty! The piano clearly needs to be moved and all of the little baskets, pictures and bins need to be contained in a clean looking cabinet! Hide everything!!! From the wall on the right to the stone on the left it is a total of 167.5″. My potential plan will span 140″ which will leave a 27″ spot to the left side allowing the last barstool to be pulled out with room to spare.
We have talked about the bottom portion of this build but what about the top? This area is still a little unplanned to be honest because I feel like I need to see how everything looks in place prior to nailing this down for sure. I am hoping that I will be able to add two towers that are only 12″ deep on either side of the builts ins to anchor them and create more storage. This would also allow an enclosed space between them to add a beautiful tile! Add a few floating shelves or mirrors and it would be complete.
I am super excited about this project and the huge change it is going to make in this space! So off to the store I go for step one, buying the cabinets! I will be filming a vlog style Youtube to show the process of how I begin my projects so stay tuned for that!
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