Passthrough

Let's chat about the passthrough, shall we? I'm thinking glass mosaic tile in rich colors and a fabulous design, new trim...wait, wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me explain.

Passthrough, as seen from the kitchen.

Below is a photo of the passthrough from the kitchen to the erstwhile dining room. The erstwhile dining room is now our office. We use part of the erstwhile living room as the dining room, which has been renamed the pretentious great room.

Passthrough, as seen from the office.

The office, because it was intended to be a dining room circa 1970, is open to the great room. Which is great for a dining room, but not for an office. We'd like the office to be a space that could be private when needed, to be used as a guest room or just a place to get away. So, someday, we'd like to wall off the office, and install French doors. The French doors, in theory, would enable the space to be used as a dining room again if needed, and provide the privacy when we need while not closing it off completely.

The great room, as seen from the office. Imagine French doors in this space.

Now, back to the passthrough. In order to achieve the noise reduction that we'd like in the office, we need to wall off the passthrough. But as you can see, the passthrough is handy as paperback book storage. Plus, we don't want to do anything permanent, just in case the next person who buys this house thinks that a passthrough to a dining room is the cat's meow.

My idea: mount a board from the office side of the passthrough. This board will fill in the space, created a flat surface that is visible from the kitchen. It could be removed in the future without major renovation. On the office side, add a shelf to the board and paint, voila--built-in book shelf. Nothing like enabling the reading addiction, eh?

But what to do with the kitchen side of the board? Here's the current plan: We can remove existing trim and replace with new trim pieces on the sides plus trim pieces on the top and bottom of the shelf to match. I think that this will create the appearance of a frame space. Inside the frame space, I'd like to create something interesting out of glass mosiac tiles, but this is where I'm fresh out of ideas.

Passthrough as seen from the kitchen

What do I put here? The wallpaper is going to be removed in a few weeks, and we're going to paint it the color...still to be determined. So what do I want here? Something recognizable, like a pineapple? Or a butterfly? Or something geometric and symmetric? Or a random pattern in colors similar to the counter and cabinet? Or just a single color? And which color is that?