Problem Solving: Foyer Bench

Two big lessons we've learned from this building a custom home from scratch process:

1. As much as you try to think of everything as you plan and research, there's no such thing as a perfect house. Or a perfectly finished house. Once we threw out that expectation, the process got a lot less stressful and a lot more fun. 

2. As much as you think you know what something is going to look like, you really don't until the drywall is up (or later!).

This second point leads me to the topic of this post. Our foyer bench. We are a "shoes off" in the house family. I've been this way for several years, probably starting after I bought my townhouse and was responsible for cleaning the floors. But it wasn't until I had a child crawling around that I really thought about all the disgusting things things we step in outside. And I really don't want that stuff in our house. 

Our current house doesn't have much of a foyer or mudroom, and while I was able to make a mudroom-esque area for the family entrance, it's not super convenient for guests to remove their shoes. This was something I wanted to remedy in the new house. 

On paper, it looked like we would have plenty of room for a bench. In reality, we have about 15" clearance between our niche and the front door when it is swinging open. In my vast and exhaustive search, I could only find benches that were 16" or deeper. 

Niche as is

Not enough space for a bench under the niche or behind the door.

The dilemma.

Now, it's totally my fault that it's come to this. We should have seen the issue at the dry wall stage. I blame it on my three month headache. Then I tried to ignore it. Then I looked all over for a bench that would work. Then I stressed about it. Then we finally asked our GC about taking out the niche. That's when he made the brilliant suggestion to make the bench in the niche. This actually solves two issues, because we had no idea what we were going to do with that area anyway. So, we're going to cut out the drywall from the bottom of the arch to about 18". Then our trim guy, Chris, will put in a little wood seat. Voila! Niche bench.

I can't find a picture that is exactly what we have in mind, but the three below will help describe it. As is, our niche would have been a simplified version of this:

Knap Traditional Entry via Houzz

Ideally, I would have liked storage underneath, like this.

Source: HGTV

However, since there is an outlet under the niche, it will look more like this, with the arched top. We do have a coat closet right there, so we can always put a shoe rack on the floor. I love when a plan comes together!

Reformed Nook by Happy Day

***Update***
Here's a link to the finished foyer.

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