Closet to Reading Nook Transformation

My dear ol' mother has a home studio for her photography business. It is pretty impressive how she created a business space from two separate rooms. In her waiting room, she wanted to add a space just for children without taking up too much room. She had a cluttered closet that was overflowing with things that had no place in the house.

My mother came up with the idea of a reading nook after completely cleaning out the closet. Once it was bare, she was able to see the potential.

Before the conversion of the closet, the only distraction she had for the children of her clients was a small basket filled with toys hidden underneath a chair. Needless to say, there was not much for children in the room.

Unfortunately, we don't have any cluttered before pictures of the closet to show you, so you'll just have to take my word for it! It was M-E-S-S-Y! It was almost unusable as a closet, more like a hoarder's paradise! There were shelves attached to the walls that she removed, and somewhere along the way, she tried to remove the door frame too! That was all sorts of fail at the time, but you would never know the tiring process that it took from the finished project!

Once she cleared everything out of the closet, it was time to get to work! The shelves pictured in the photo aboveremoved during this process, along with the door itself. She debated on whether to leave the shelves near the top, but decided to remove those as well in order to create her own.

After removing the shelves and patching all of the holes that were created, my mom began fashioning the seat for the reading nook. She took the measurements of the closet to determine the exact size of the seat. Because she knew the width of the cushion, she had an idea of how the measurements were going to come out. Now began the construction process.

She screwed the surrounding support to the existing studs in the wall. Because she wanted extra storage included in the seating, my mom created a large gap between the seat support and the seat base.

After attaching the plywood boards on top of both the seat base and seat support, it was time to move on to the overhead shelving. It was created almost the same as the seat base, with the frame being supported by existing wall studs. She decided on having two separate overhead shelves to maximize storage.

After painting the seat and the shelves white, she attempted to remove the door frame. That warranted many a laugh! I tried to help with the removal process, but all I could do was laugh. During the removal, we only ended up ruining the door frame. My mom had a brief moment of a freak out, and after that was said and done, we thought of a solution. A door jamb kit! That was better than measuring the door frame and cutting wood to go around it. Problem solved!

The last step was just to decorate, which surprisingly, is harder than it sounds! But I believe she did an amazing job! Now, the children of her clients have their own little space while they wait.