For a long time, I’ve had a plan to build a few built-in bench seats to be book nooks for reading. The first one is now (mostly) done.

As with most wood working projects, we started by carefully selecting the wood and preparing it. We glued these boards together the same way we did the new doors, with routed channels and small pieces of plywood to add strength. Here is the wood after it was glued and sanded, but before any finishing.

And here’s the (near) final product.

The windows here face the mountains in the west and offer a great view. There is storage under the seats. (Note the charging station plugs with USB and regular outlets.)

I think we’re going to cover the front of this with the same material we use for the kitchen bar…hopefully distressed corrugated metal if we can find some we like.

Oh, and we finally found that pesky electrical short. Fortunately, it was behind the part of the wall that is still just OSB, not behind the brick. Good news!