Today we have a home decor question from my girl Kristen. As you can see from the picture, there’s a weird cubby above her closet that’s sort of begging for something…But what that something is? Who knows.
Before we delve into what in the hell to do with the weird cubby, let’s take a second to talk about those weird spaces contractors create, shall we? Most of the time I see these spaces in kitchens, when contractors don’t make the cabinets go all the way up to the ceiling. These spaces personally offend me, because I feel like a good contractor should make spaces as efficient as possible. Contractors of the world: Wasted space is not efficient!
However, you can at least make some use out of these empty above-the-kitchen-cabinet spaces – they make good a storage area for big vases, punch bowls, picnic baskets, etc.
A weird cubby above a closet, though…Now that’s a whole new kind of wasted space. Are you supposed to use the weird cubby as storage? (What would you store there? Nothing cute like a punch bowl, that’s for damn sure.) Are you supposed to paint around the weird cubby and just pretend it doesn’t exist? (“Weird cubby? What weird cubby?”)
Kristen mentioned to me that another weird cubby in their house has been fixed by adding crown molding to hit right at the bottom of the weird cubby. But dude, crown molding is sort of a bitch. I mean, I assume it is. I’ve never done crown molding myself, but I have done baseboards and I imagine they’re pretty similar. You need a fancy saw and you have to measure once and cut twice (or something) and you have to figure out how to adhere it to the wall (glue? nail gun?) And then there’s caulking! And the touch-up painting! And all this on a ladder, as opposed to sitting on the floor! I’m having nightmares just thinking about it.
So! My advice to you Kristen is to first determine what you plan to do with the weird cubby. Do you have something cute to put there? I am going to assume you don’t and so let’s move on to my second question.
What color are you planning to paint the room? Are you looking to keep it neutral/light? If so, I think you can get away with painting everything but the weird cubby. Just paint around it and pretend it doesn’t exist.
If you’re looking to go dark, then I’d say you need to get yourself up on a ladder and into that weird cubby because you’re going to need to paint the sides and the back. This will draw more attention to the weird cubby, though, which might not be your ideal situation (however, it would be your ideal situation if you had something to put in that weird cubby.)
If you’re totally sold on the crown molding idea, I’d say no matter what color you paint the room – light or dark – you would leave the weird cubby as-is. The crown molding’s job would be to mitigate any weird cubbiness and would be the ultimate “Weird cubby? What weird cubby?” tool.
Well, Kristen, I hope I gave you a few options for the situation you’re working with…Let me know what you end up doing with the weird cubby!
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Ok, here’s my suggestion…I’m flying off the seat of my pants since I don’t know what this room is going to be used for, but if you could somehow get some rope lighting up there (maybe drill a hole through the top of the closet & run it through), then it can serve as an alcove with “accent” lighting! Or, get (or make) one of those cute wooden signs that has some inspirational phrase in cursive, then prop it up as a display in the cubby. If you want to get really decorative, you could accent it with some crinkled up shiny fabric, or a really thick ribbon that is reinforced with wire. Sorry, gotta live my home projects life vicariously through others while I dwell in a rental!
Thanks lady! I really want to paint around it, but the issue is HOW because on that right side, like, there’s no corner or anything create a place to stop the wall paint color — do you know what I mean? It would just be, like, stopping at some arbitrary spot, or getting my lazy ass up in that cubby and painting all the way to the back. So, probably I’ll do that and put something cute up there — I like the lighting idea, although that might be beyond my level of expertise …