Karinl, thank you! Sometimes you see a piece and you just KNOW it's the one. That's what happened here. With the cabinet, and with DH! Lindac, how old do you think it is? It would be fun to know. I'm feeling really good about this purchase. I'm anxious to git 'er done! The floor. I come up with crazy ideas and DH always says "we can do that". I was apprehensive about putting a rug in the room because the doors are our only access to the back yard. Four grandsons and muddy feet...you get the picture. I have always loved inlaid floors, so we thought a wood rug was the way to go. The design came out of the scary place I call my brain. Drew it up in Auto Cad with a detailed measured plan. The natural oak is the flooring we installed in the rest of the downstairs rooms. Off we went to Lumber Liquidators with a piece of it. We first had to find something that the tongues and grooves fit together correctly. We settled on the teak because it fit, we liked the color, and there were only 3 boxes left so we got it for a song! It was important to me that the contrasting wood be real as opposed to stained in the event we ever have to refinish the floor. Don't want to lose the contrast! DH cut every little piece to fit. He then routed grooves into the cut ends and inserted splines where tongues were needed. It all went together like a giant puzzle. Not bad for prefinished hardwood flooring! Sorry for the novel. Aren't you glad you asked?

I think your builder's budget was probably low, as usual for a lot of builder estimates. For 13 foot x 10 foot of fine case goods, that is a bit low to average price. You have the added difficulty of the hidden door in that price, so I think the quote overall is a bit low. Wait! I read it again. It's unfinished? Then it's probably about right. But if this is going to be stained, it should be stained just after the fabrication phase off site in a clean room, not on site. It would be better painted off site too if that's the final finish, but it's doable onsite for paint more than staining would be. I'd expect finishing to add about 2-3K to the price.

Glad to hear your girls like fairy tale characters. The book was rather difficult with a jillion characters to keep track of but maybe someday they will tackle that also. As far as a pic of the room, it doesn't exist except in my mind. Right now it is filled to the ceiling almost with stuff moved out of our kitchen which has been demolished and any furniture now in the room such as a loveseat and coffee table,etc. will be given/donated away. I'm even not absolutely sure of the arrangement in my diagram but so far I'm tending in that direction. May have to close the wall a bit between living room and dining room because I think a little less openness there might add some coziness and also give me room to put a corner cabinet in the dining room that will kind of be hidden but still useful for storage which is what this house has least of. Obviously, I don't have this all together but I do best one step at a time so if I could make up my mind about the bookcases, I think it would help me move on to the next step of deciding the rest of the furniture/room. Even the fireplace is unfinished and covered with cement backer board ready for marble (which we haven't picked out yet) but I think the bookcases because they will be first thing one sees when they enter the room should be decided first. Thoughts? The house though small is quite nice even if I do say so myself - especially once we get the kitchen remodel finished. (Though we also have a big job ahead of us doing the hardwood floors plus other tasks by contractors - this is not diy). The house is 75 years old but as I continue on this journey of remodeling, it seems my tastes have definitely moved from vintage/eclectic to modern/eclectic. Hence the reason for my indecision. I think the builtin bookcases will definitely bring me back from my modern direction. And I've heard it mentioned here that some think builtin bookcases give a room character. We are very fortunate that our house has so much character that it is not a major concern to add more. Though guess it never hurts. (sorry I'm rambling, it is late , will stop here...)

The hinges were the most difficult thing to figure out. I ended up going with heavy duty swing clear hinges (from Hardware Source and then carefully placed the frame trim so that it covered most of the hinges. You can see the barrel of the hinge protruding from the right edge of the trim in the first picture above. Note that to get the trim to fit down over the hinge, I needed to route out large notches in the back of the right side trim piece. The other big difficulty was remembering enough of college trigonometry to figure out how much the sides of the cabinet needed to slope in at the back of the cabinet so that the door would be able to swing open. (In my case the answer was 12.5 degrees) The total cost for this project breaks down as follows: $150 - wood (2 10' 1x8 poplar, 1 4' 1x8 poplar, 2 10' 1x3 poplar, 1 4'x8' sheet plywood, 1 pre-primed paint grade door frame) $90 - swing clear butt hinges $100 - pocket screw jig kit I don't have a secret compartment in the bottom of the bookcase, but I think I will put one there that will be accessible from the inside of the closet.