The main catalyst in rearranging my daughter’s room all revolved around her “closet”  or lack thereof.  As this room was technically our dining room years ago, it does not have a proper closet.  So we have made do by incorporating garment rods into the bookcases we built about 4 years ago.  And they have been perfect, until school uniforms came around.  Now with dual wardrobes, we had to rethink her clothing storage situation.  Our solution was to add a third Rast dresser from Ikea… but the only place to add these was in front of her “window wall”.  I say “window wall” because you might remember we covered up the existing french doors with a faux wall as the doors were not needed…  This wall was a live & learn project, that we decided to improve upon.
Here is an image of her old “wall”
Pro from our original wall:
Insulation!!  These aren’t the most energy efficient doors & they have a few gaps.  When installing the wall we made sure to add insulation which instantly made this the warmest room in the house.  (Fun fact… our house has no insulation in it! Gotta love an older home.)
Cons:
Natural light.  As in there was very little once the wall went up.  It appears very bright in this image, however this only occurred about 30 minutes each day… 
We did not consider the exterior appearance.  The french doors exit onto our deck (the one with the astroturf) & you could see all of the insulation & supports.  Oops.  I remedied this by adding a mirrored film to the exterior, but again, that took away from the little natural light entering her space.
So, I decided to revisit this idea to achieve the look I originally had in mind.  Now this is something that I truly don’t expect anyone to duplicate because this is a very rare circumstance, but the reason I am sharing this is to make you look at the problems in your own home with an open mind.  With a little creativity anything is possible.
After removing the old “wall”, which was really quite easy as we designed it to be temporary in the first place, I added some framing for the new “windows”.
Using standard 1×4″ pine boards I created a frame that I nailed together using a nail gun.  All of the framing is nailed into itself &/or the surrounding bookcase, never the doors.  This way we could eventually remove this & have french doors again.  My husband was smart enough to reverse the door knob so it could be built within the framing.
I then filled in the framing with some insulation to seal in those gaps in the doors.  My favorite feature from the last “wall”.
I then added a 1/4″ thick board to the front of the framing & instantly the doors became windows.  I finished off the look with a few pieces of moulding & then continued to paint the entire built in wall in Farrow & Ball’s Yeabridge Green in Full Gloss.  It truly is a beautiful shade of green.  And the perfect color to share on St Patricks day! lol
This was exactly what I had in mind two years ago!!!  I am so happy that I retackled this area.  And I’m going to let you on a little secret, this is the first project of this scale I did all by myself.  So I am pretty proud of how far my skills have come over the past couple of years. 
Over the next few days I will be sharing more about her spotted Ikea Rast dressers which sit perfectly in front of her new windows.  I will also be sharing the sneaky window treatment I choose.  It might be one of my favorite elements in the space.

xo – Kristin