The broom closet

This project was in process the last time we updated the blog (aug/sept timeframe). Between the living room and the kitchen theres about 2 feet of hallway - well I'm not sure if you can call it a hallway, but at any rate its this 2 foot wide no mans land. On either side we have AC ductwork running upstairs (one for supply, one for return). When we bought the house, the right side of this hall was framed with a louvred door acting as a broom closet. To the left, they sealed it up with drywall. During kitchen renovations, curiosity got the best of me and that drywall came down, revealing an unused space (complete with requisite cracking/peeling plaster). At the time, we had bigger fish to fry so this area was left as is. Eventually this area's time would come, and that time was now (well, really that time was in august, but you get the idea).

When the kitchen work was done, I did make sure that there was electrical supplied to this area to support an outlet or a light somewhere down the line. With that available, we decided to redo the broom closet and then build a bookcase in the dead space on the left. Then one can recessed light on the top (handy to find the book(s) we'll want to refer to. Since we have some nice ikea bookcases about 3 feet away in the living room, we really didn't need a bookcase for more fiction/non-fiction works. Rather, this baby is just for our cookbook collection.

Once we figured out how to frame out the AC ducts, it was really a matter of hanging drywall, mudding said drywall, painting, and finally installation of door and bookcase. Since this area is on the small side, its hard to get good pics. And not surprisingly we never took pictures of how this area looked when we bought it. But I think you get the idea:

Bookcase before (this is almost how it looked for months and months:
And after framing out the back wall, hanging drywall, and some more of the Benji Moore Fusion paint we love in the kitchen, to tie the two areas together:
Now its ready for the bookcase and cookbooks:
And on the other side, the broomcloset.
Before (thats it, way back when the kitchen was in process):
Gutted:
...and here's the 'after', new walls and a new, smaller door: