Most people look at the empty space above a closet and see nothing worth mentioning. Elena looked at hers and saw a reading nook. She documented the build on TikTok as @elenagetsweird, turning roughly eight feet of unused vertical space into a cozy perch with help from her fiancé, a carpenter.
In her video, Elena walks through the process of building out the platform above her closet, showing the framing, the access point and the finished nook, complete with cushions and enough clearance to actually sit and read comfortably. It’s worth noting upfront that her fiancé’s carpentry background isn’t a small detail here: an elevated platform inside a home needs proper structural support to hold weight safely, and having someone with that expertise involved in the build is a meaningful part of why the project came together as a usable space rather than just a decorative shelf.
That distinction matters for anyone watching the video and imagining a similar project in their own home. An elevated nook built without attention to load-bearing supports, secure anchoring and safe access isn’t the same undertaking as what’s shown here, and it’s not a project to approach purely by eye without either professional help or real carpentry knowledge of your own.
Setting the safety considerations aside, the appeal of the finished space is easy to see. Closets in most homes reach the same ceiling height as the rest of the room, leaving several feet of dead air above them that almost never gets used for anything. Elena’s project reframes that wasted vertical space as some of the most interesting square footage in the room, turning a purely functional storage area into a small retreat.
Content built around finding unexpected uses for overlooked space tends to resonate broadly because the underlying problem, a home that feels smaller than it should given its actual square footage, is nearly universal. Elena’s reading nook offers a genuinely fresh answer to that problem rather than another rehash of standard storage hacks.
The Takeaway
If your home has dead vertical space above a closet, a stairwell or another built-in feature, it’s worth considering whether that area could become something more than empty air. Just make sure any elevated platform you build gets evaluated by someone who understands structural load, whether that’s a contractor, an engineer or, as in this case, an experienced carpenter, before you treat it as safe to sit or stand in regularly. A great-looking nook is only worth having if it’s genuinely secure.
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