your house is totally beautiful. Myself if it was my house i would do a few things. First I would paint some color on the walls, a bit darker maybe in browns, or a sage green, or a soft gold..and then I would find some type of art that I love, or large plates or something..and I would put a colleciton of those items on the wall across the entire space at the same level, above the wall and entertainment center..remember you'll have to clean whatever you put up there so try to make the items things that won't gather a lot of dust..also that other large wall area on the other side calls for something large..maybe you could put something in the same venue on that wall.. some ideas might be, say a collection of clocks, a colleciton of pictures, a colleciton of large platters or tin trays, metal grilles..etc. and then if you want to set things on the ledge, try to tie the items into the art on the wall..and keep it simple. say if you were in the desert or mexican region, you could put up there some large mexican type plates or flat wicker type bowls, with some other large urns in a similar style on the ledge.. Say if you are into antiques..you could put a colleciton of antiques across the wall of similar size and shapes and then put a few coordinating antiques on the ledge.. i do see that you enjoy the wicker look, i think i would go with that look by adding a warm brown to the walls or a sage green, and then I would hang the larges wicker trays you can find in a row across the wall, put the large wicker baskets in the far right hand corner, and add a few more around the room..maybe with magazines in them, make sure the scale of the items you use in the room are very very large..you might check out some import stores like Pier one for large items..they have beautiful large painted wooden items that are dark and would go with your wood..some are the size of doors ..they can be quite expensive though so watch for sales..they would be beautiful up there, with maybe some import items on the shelf that would coordinate??

The wood floor in front of the stairs is the part that's only 36". That's why I don't want newels in front of the bottom step, wanted them to sides (on bullnose step) originally, now given I can't do that with these steps I want them *on* the bottom step, coming straight down from where the ones attached to the wall are. I have 43" of wall on the side of the stairs and it's about 6ft deep though I don't want to put anything deeper than an 18" deep bench there. A bench would really be more useful than a table for us. I keep checking CL and thrift stores, so far I haven't even found a cheap twin headboard, small dresser, or even an nice (small) old door I can make into a bench. Here is a link that might be useful: Inspiration

Yeah. I hear you. Makes a lot of sense to fix it up for someone else to enjoy, huh?!! I fear we may live here long enough with a few things we want finished but not completed to be in the very same place as you. Seems we are always too busy to take care of our own needs because we are taking care of someone else, right? Life has a way of getting in the way of living...and passing WAY too quickly! (Off my soapbox now! Smiles.)

It's not a crazy long fall, just a flight, but still my cat sprained his ankle once just from falling off a book case onto carpet. The only thing I have been able to think of is to put up some kind of short railing made of either white wood spindles or plexi glass in the middle of the ledge, with moldings on both sides of the railings at an angle so that doesn't become a new ledge. My concern with that is like you said that it might just create a new more dangerous ledge still on top. I know if I just leave the ledge how it is now he is likely to hang out on it all the time, and sooner or later will either miss jumping up and fall or roll over when he is sleeping or grooming himself. He almost has done that a few times in one of his fav spots which is sitting on our DVR on top of a book case. Luckily my husband noticed and stopped him. That's with a much safer fall and a much wider base. And unfortunately the just watch him approach won't work, because we want to move his litter box there and my husband has encouraged him to do crazy adventurous things and spots him, so now when we're present he thinks he can do anything and not get hurt. So he is actually more prone to attempt dangerous stunts when we're there.