This was the simplest update I’ve done in a while, but it made a serious impact on my living room! This bookshelf is one of the first things you see when you come in our house and it is a showstopper now!
Back in April I had the opportunity to attend SNAP conference. It’s a fabulous experience for anyone in the creative blogging world and one of the reason’s that April is my favorite month of the year! There were a lot of amazing sponsors there and one of the ones I had the most fun meeting and hanging out with was Walls Need Love. Their big deal is removable wallpaper, but unlike other companies and other removable wallpapers the paper they sell comes in some of the most amazing and unique prints out there. Their papers have almost a fabric like feeling and thankfully they are super easy to reposition and reuse. I fell in love hard with their banana leaf print and I knew that I needed to have it in my life and in my house.
We’ve had this ginormous bookshelf in our house for as long as I can remember and it is seriously a monster! At 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide, it can sometimes be a challenge to figure out where it will fit into our decor without dominating the space. A couple of years ago I painted the outside red to try to give it some interest, however as the years have gone on and our home style has started to become more cohesive the red was sticking out like a sore thumb.
Speaking of home styles my friend Albion suggested that I come up with a general color palette or style board so that as I am contemplating making changes or purchasing things for my home I can quickly compare it with my board to make sure it will fit. I thought that was the most genius idea so of course I made one. It’s really been so helpful as I pick out decor pieces and even paint colors, especially when I am at the store. I keep the photo on my phone so I can check it from anywhere. I’ll share with you the process for making your own in the future, but for now here’s mine.
So now that you know what I’m working with let me share with you what I did. The first thing I needed to do was cover up all that red! I went with the same blue (Superior Blue by Behr) that we used on our hutch, our built ins and in our kitchen. I am absolutely in love with this color, it makes my heart happy. The perfect deep blue! It took two solid coats of the blue to cover that red, but as soon as I started rolling it on, I knew I made the right decision. Once it was dry I went back and started rolling on the white. I went with a chalk finish paint for a couple of reasons. The main one being that you don’t have to sand or prime before painting directly on the wood. What can I say, I’m kind of a lazy painter! Putting white over the wood took 3 coats and I was pretty over it by the time that third coat went on, but it was soooo worth it!
I had to wait for the paint to dry in order to get to the good part. The wallpaper! The wall paper comes in 20″ wide rolls, however each side of my bookshelf is 24″. So I needed to make sure that I got my paper centered. I’m not going to lie to you all, this probably should have been a two person job. But, I was trying to get the whole thing done before my husband got home from work. See if I want to do a major project and I don’t want to have a conversation about the project, my best bet is to get it done while he is at work. He doesn’t reallllly mind most of the time, but the time I spend convincing him of how awesome it’s going to be is time I would rather spend just getting it done. So yeah, hanging a 7 foot section of wallpaper alone, while trying to keep it centered was not the easiest thing I did that week.
Luckily this wallpaper is not only removable, but also reusable, which meant that I could peel and restick it as often as I needed to get it just right. Once I got them all up, it was time to stage the shelves. Normally I really struggle with this part, but I actually feel like I nailed it on this one! My husband and I are both readers so we have a lot of books, and an eclectic collection of books as well. I feel like I was able to balance the absurd number of books we own, with plants, photos and other knick knacks. Plus I finally found the perfect home for the giant ampersand I got from SNAP as well!
