I wanted to document some of the work I've been doing at our house. I put up a bench seat + shelves + a sort-of sideboard in the living room in December. And I finally got our artwork up in a gallery wall a little after that.

Bench with custom dog cubbies and bookshelves. It's since gotten a cushion

The sideboard somewhat organized.

The gallery wall and a toy explosion.

Construction

I've gotten into a rhythm of 3/4" plywood with pocket hole screws - mostly from redoing my office a bunch of times.

I made the bench high enough to fit the dog crate under it, which actually feels too high to sit on. I've got some ideas on how to redo the bench area and then maybe we'd paint the whole thing.

The sideboard was pretty ad-hoc - I still imagine I'll put some backing on it someday here although the current setup does make for flexible cord management.

Keeping things simple keeps it from feeling too precious and also keeps me from getting stuck in perfectionism. I kind of want it to feel like a kids library space.

Gallery Wall

The gallery wall plan

In our old apartment I build a little Observable app. As it goes these days I rebuilt (prompted) it with Claude. The secret is to put big ones towards the middle and then spiral/jitter the onter ones out. I've since extended it and made a few adjustments and now it feels super comfy.

Bonus

I found a picture of the an earlier iteration of the bench - changing to book shelves on the bottom made it feel a lot more welcoming.