Our biggest design challenge since buying this house has turned out not to be furniture, wall color, curtains, or any of the common challenges we were expecting, but… nooks.

There are three, and I don’t have the slightest clue what do with any of them. The one that baffles me the most is this one:

the dining nook nook

This is in the kitchen, directly across from the breakfast table. Were it located anywhere else in the house, I would slap a door on it and call it a linen closet, problem solved. However, because it’s in the kitchen, and because I don’t want my sheets and comforters smelling like food, I am at a total loss for what to do.

We considered turning it into a bar, but it’s so deep (24″?) and high (I can’t reach the top shelf at all) that a bar seems like a waste of this potentially great storage space—I mentioned before that storage is at a premium.

Furthermore, like all the nooks in this house, the brackets for the shelves aren’t affixed to the wall with screws or nails, but with wood glue, so removing them is out because I don’t want to damage the drywall. Thanks, previous owners, for locking me into your stupid shelving decisions!

Then there’s the coffee and tea nook:

coffee and tea nook

This one, at least, is functional. I hate the bulky, honey-colored, 80s-reminiscent shelf, but I can paint the bracket and replace the shelf with glass, and I’ll be even happier with the overall look once the wall is painted. Moving on!

This nook is in our living room, goes from the floor to halfway up the wall, features the same terrible shelving and irreplaceable brackets, and is just a total eyesore.

the empty nook

Currently I’m using it to store my cookbooks, but that is just temporary.

nook in living room with cookbooks

My friend Sara has suggested that we put a door with a latch on and use it (again) as a liquor cabinet, and that’s the best suggestion I’ve heard yet, but because of the unsual size of it, we’d probably have to custom-fit a door.

If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them! No curtain suggestions, though: a gathered curtain covering a nook never looks good to me, just lazy and cheap.