The door to nowhere

This is an interesting feature of our new, old house. This door on the stairway landing doesn't go anywhere. There is just nicely painted drywall behind it. The previous owners thought that the original floor plan might had had a double stairway and that the door would have led to stairs to the kitchen. Who knows. That's as good a guess as any. It is curious that the door was left in place, rather than just making it a plain wall.

Anyway, we have had many discussions about what we could put behind the door to nowhere. A skeleton? Seasonal decorations? Paint a mural? So many options...

The Mr. working hard to remove the drywall from behind the door.

Finally, we came up with the idea of trying to turn the space behind the door into a bookcase. There was minimal clearance behind the door and we couldn't make it any deeper due to it backing directly onto our kitchen cabinets. We measured and figured that the shelves will just fit paperbacks if we maximize the space we have. The Mr. did a wonderful job turning a not-quite-square doorway into a bookcase with level shelves. He even figured out how to make the base part match the existing trim. A fine job all around. We both feel that it turned out great and is a wonderful use of the space. It was also nice to be able to empty a few more boxes from the basement :-)

The finished project!