How They Pulled It Off: A Micro Library in a Midcentury’s Awkward Kitchen Nook

Welcome to How They Pulled It Off, where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.

The owners of a 1948 home in San Mateo, California, were already midway through a kitchen and living room renovation when they realized they hadn’t made plans for an awkward, 67-square-foot nook between the kitchen and a sprawl of front windows. But being avid book collectors—of cookbooks, in particular, some of which are family heirlooms—they had a dream that, perhaps, they could stop using it as a junk room and turn it into the perfect space for the thousand-or-so books that were occupying their garage and guest room; they could both organize their tomes and provide easier access to their vast collection of recipes.

That’s when their contractor suggested calling Anne Poon, a Bay Area designer who specializes in crisp minimalism. Poon’s challenge was to design for a boxy space that wasn’t perfectly square, and to do so without changing the home’s architectural integrity, all while the adjacent rooms were also under construction.

The space itself was limiting: because of how its ceiling was connected to the roof line, it couldn’t be raised without heavy modifications to the exterior architecture, changes that would have blown up the owners’ budget. So, Poon worked with the existing dimensions, envisioning a flexible, cozy library nook. It has shelving that organizes the owners’ books and built-in benches that are, yes, comfortable for reading, but also for other activities, like playing a Persian setar, as one of the owners likes to do.

How they pulled it off: Building a reading nook in a fixed space

• Measure, measure, and measure again: Poon’s first hurdle was figuring out the angles in a midcentury home where the ceilings and floors were not perfectly straight. After measuring three times, she came up with both 2D and 3D modelings showing how a wood structure that was sturdy enough to hold 1,000 heavy books could be built "like a little jigsaw puzzle."

• Use constraints to your creative advantage: Poon designed the nook from nine interlocking pieces, to be installed in four different sections—the bench and back wall first, then two front towers facing out to the living room, followed by the window trim. Poon worked with a cabinetry maker to match the unit to the kitchen’s already-built, solid oak veneer. Each shelf was cut from one piece of solid oak to hold the weight of the books and maximize storage possibilities.