The Wall Make-over

When we moved into our house last May, we were absolutely thrilled with the large living room.  We filled one area of the room with our furniture, but we planned to leave a generous amount of open floor space in the middle of the room and put our bookshelves on either side of the sliding glass back doors. 

 Before:

Unfortunately, our flimsy book shelves did not survive the move so we needed to move on to Plan B. 

Our motto since moving here has been, "Do it right the first time," so we've determined to take our time to have things look the way we want them rather than rush into quick fixes.  We decided to ask my dad to help us create built-in book shelves to frame the back doors, but he took the project on himself and built us a custom bookshelf/cabinet unit!  

There were numerous over-the-phone consultations about measurements and location of outlets and the number of shelves we wanted...and then Dad spent numerous fall weekend hours in his workshop sawing and hammering and designing until one Sunday afternoon in January, it was ready to be delivered and hauled into our house.  (Yes, hauled!  It is heavy!)

It took the following week to prime and paint.

Then once it was bolted into the wall, the fun began!  It was time to sort through our many, many boxes of stored books to decide what we wanted to put on the shelves.  (Since the shelf for the left side of the door is not yet complete, we had to make choices.) 

Then the fun continued as I got to decorate.  I made a wreath, inspired by this tutorial.  (I used a copy of The Prince and the Pauper that Brian found on the library's free shelf.  It may be silly, but I just did not want to use a trashy romance novel!)

Then we ordered a chair, took down our ugly vertical blinds, and hung a cheerful valance to complete our cozy reading corner. 

After:









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