When you walk into our house, you enter into the living room. If you look straight ahead, you are facing the dining room, and the kitchen beyond that. This is what it looks like:
Is it a half-wall or just a wall with a hole in it? A pass-through? I’ve never liked this wall. It’s just silly to me. Don’t get me wrong, a simple pass-through like this wouldn’t be bad in a contemporary house. But this isn’t a contemporary house, it’s a Victorian.
While painting, I decided to remove the piece of wood in the half wall that had bothered me since we moved in. The wood doesn’t look so bad from this angle, but it was very worn (not in a good way), ill-fitted and very, very orange. It was also too narrow to use as a buffet, but deep enough to collect piles of papers and things all the time.
It was very easy, there were no fasteners keeping it in place, just 5 layers of paint. So it just took some scraping with a flat head screwdriver, and a mallet. Once it was free from the paint, the whole piece of wood just lifted right up.
I am kicking myself for living with it there for 3+ years. It’s gone now, and it looks better, but the wall is still silly. I don’t know how to make it not silly. I’m thinking of possibly building in a buffet on the dining room side and adding moulding to make them look more like pillars, but that’s a big job. Any ideas?
The silly half wall looks fine with me (even better now that you got rid of the wood). The pillars can be made easily by applying inexpensive plastic profiles from the home improvement store. Just glue them on each side and paint over them, they will look like moldings.
That sounds simple, I’ll have to look into it. Thank you!
I love your half wall!! I’d love one in our home, between the kitchen and the living room would be perfect 🙂
I think your molding idea is fantastic. Would moldigs just do the job, maybe you do not need the buffet? Or get a more bulky cabinet under the opening on the dining room side.
The moulding might be enough by itself…we certainly don’t need more storage.
I vote for the buffet, but I would also use it constantly; we frequently have lots of friends over, so it qould be very handy for serving meals.
My other thought is that it wouldn’t be terribly hard to fill in with a 2×4 frame and drywall, maybe an afternoon worth of work to completely close in the hole, but then the little breakfast nook might seem claustrophobic. Perhaps the pillar & buffet idea is your best bet.
I thought about closing it up too, and the only reason we decided not to is because the dining room gets no natural light, so it would become a cave.
I love your inspiration picture. Maybe you can get the look with some molding and a buffet in front of the half wall. It would be less trouble.
Isn’t it pretty? 🙂 That would definitely be easier.
I like your home. It looks so simple yet cozy..
I like that so beauthiful