Before Kyle and I even bought our own place, we had purchased a ridiculously heavy and old bookshelf from a company that was shutting down and purging all of its office supplies. It wasn’t exactly the most attractive  bookshelf, but it did the job in holding all of our random books, from my chick-lit novels to his welding books from school. We’ve dragged it around with us for nearly 5 years now and when we decided to put in new carpet and move Isla into her “big girl” room, I thought I’d take the opportunity to give it a little facelift.

Of course, I got started before taking “before” photos, but I did manage to find a couple of photos of it as background noise:

See? Brown and not very pretty. It’s a solid bookcase, but is wrapped in laminate, so it was going to make painting it a little tricky. Lucky for me, Kyle supported me in this project and he sanded down the finish with his palm sander. (Probably because he thought I’d sand my fingers off, or something like that, which is a huge possibility.) He also went out to the paint store and bought me the best primer and paint her could get his hands on. I had told him to get white paint and since he knows that there is no such thing as “just white” paint, he asked the lady at the paint store to help him with the right “shade.”

Anyway, the shelf ended up needing two coats of primer. Here’s a photo after I had the first coat all done:

After I was done priming it, it needed another two coats of paint:

I would have finished this a lot sooner if I was able to paint while Isla was awake, but since toddlers and latex paints doesn’t exactly go together, it took me about a week to finish everything between coats. (It also makes me very happy to have an enclosed garage where I can just shut the door when I’m done and not have to worry about the wind blowing dust all over the wet paint!)

When I was finally finished, Kyle and his uncle lugged the monster back upstairs and into Isla’s room. I’m really happy with the way it turned out and it really brightens up Isla’s room! Once she gets new furniture it will look great together. Here it is, all completed and loaded with Isla’s books and stuffies:

I thought (briefly) about doing an ombre scheme on the back of the case, but since the shelves are adjustable I opted not to incase in the future Isla (or I) wants to change the height. And I’m sure Kyle would’ve groaned at that idea and the extra cost of paint anyway ;)

While I am proud of upcycling this bookshelf, I know that I probably could have bought Isla a whole new shelf for the same amount of money it cost for the paint & supplies. Womp womp. Live and learn, right? ;)