One of the things that had us totally puzzled in the new kitchen was what to do with the phone. The main phone/dsl line into the house is located on the peninsula wall. When the house was built, wall phones were the latest thing, so that's where the builders put it. It's 2011. Nobody has a wall phone hung in the kitchen. Newer phones will adapt to hanging on the wall, but the aesthetics lack. Big time. After much looking for options, we didn't find anything that would really work for us. I kept going back to Buehl's niche (http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x108/Buehl/2008-2009%20Remodel/Kitchen/MessageCenterNicheCloseupopening-1.jpg) though. We couldn't do exactly what she did for space and location reasons, but we did use that photo as inspiration. When the electrician came, we told him we needed to move the phone and electrical wiring to the other side of the stud on that small wall (so as not to run into electrical wiring on the back side of that wall). We'd already cut the niche out, we just needed the wiring on the same side of the stud. This is how it looked for weeks while we tried to figure out how to finish it:

We see the electrician around town every now and then, and every time he asks about the niche. He's told everyone about it! We finally finished it.

(The hall wall is not actually green. It's the same light blue as the back wall of the niche.) What we finally did is cut a piece of wall board for the left side that fit around the outlet and the phone jack and another rectangle for the right side. The arched top is made from wall board that has triangles cut out of the back to allow it to make the curve. There are pieces of 2 x 4 behind the arch and sides which are attached to studs or cross pieces to which the wall board is in turn screwed. All the wall board got a coat or three of joint compound. The back of the niche is painted BM Heaven on Earth like the dining room and hall walls, and the sides are painted BM Newborns' Eyes like the peninsula wall. The shelf is painted BM Bavarian Cream to match all the trim work. Seen from a little farther away:

Thank you, Buehl, for giving us the idea, and I hope this helps anyone else who's trying to think what to do with that phone.