Friday, April 8, 2011

Before and After: Our Living Room Shelving Makeover

For the last few years, we'd been using a rather unattractive old utility shelf (think garage storage) to house our books and part of our vinyl collection.  Our entertainment center had been set up in a gorgeous - but not our style - cherry cabinet that my mom passed on to us.  The main issues we had with these pieces were that they cluttered the space, didn't flow with the rest of our decor, and made it difficult to keep things organized.  We'd been hoping to find some sort of unit at a thrift store or estate sale to rework to suit our needs, but after several months of searching, just couldn't find what we were looking for. 

Last week, we took a little trip to IKEA to daydream and maybe grab a few plants stands.  I'd been drooling over the simple, modern pieces from their Expedit series for a while, but had no intention of making that kind of purchase - until I turned the corner and was greeted by answer to all of my entertainment center/bookshelf woes.

After several hours of putting together the unit (there's a reason why Ikea is so affordable, and it's called "Assembly VERY Required"), I finally got to have some design fun.  And voila:

Because the new shelving unit is black, has very simple, geometric lines, and sits up against a white wall, I wanted to add some color.  I decided to create a rainbow effect along the top shelf with books, and was able to solve our storage issue and bring in a splash of color with the lime green boxes (from IKEA's Kassett series).  To balance out the modernism of the shelf design, I added some pieces from our vintage collections:  vintage cameras, a few very old hardcover books, and, of course, our vinyl.  (Side note: this is less than half of our record collection.  Yes, we may have a slight problem.)  We also moved some of the books from the other shelf to a bookshelf in my studio, which was an added bonus for me!

Our living room space is so much more open, less cluttered, and best of all, it reflects our style.  Have any of your done any living space makeovers recently?

Happy Friday darlings!  Don't forget to come back tomorrow for a new edition of Saturday Morning Daydreams!





UPDATE: The ever-amazing Design*Sponge featured this project as part of their before and after series! Woohoo!





19 comments:

  1. WOW - you did such an amazing job! I love how you sorted the books by color. I am so inspired by this - I may just have to get started on my own bookshelf. Wonderful! :)

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  2. GORGEOUS! What a major difference! I loved how you were able to streamline everything, and the balance between the dark color and structured lines of the shelf with the color pops and vintage stuff is perfect. This should be in a magazine. :-)

    Jess

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  3. i love this! especially how you separated the books by color! I think i might have to arrange my bookself like that :) Great investment I think you will be very happy with the new addition!

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  4. Wow! I love the books by color idea - I'll have to remember that. You should submit it to some of those "before and after" design blogs.

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  5. Great job, Melissa! Love how you configured the shelves and the color arrangement of the books. It makes such a difference to have everything artfully organized, doesn't it? Also, I completely sympathize with you on the IKEA assembly; my boyfriend and I put together several Billy bookcases to line against an entire wall of our apartment for a built-in look (we have way way too many books, despite my best efforts to donate, a lot we have to keep) and it took forever! But, you really can't beat IKEA prices. Anyway, hope you and Robbie have a good weekend! :)

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  6. This is beautiful! I love how you organized the books. That whole unit is such a statement now. Good find! :)

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  7. Thank you for your comment!!! Wow, the change is awesome, I'm sure the place looks cleaner/neater right away. It's important to live tastefully organized.
    www.ThisIsAYes.com

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  8. Wow! The way you designed the shelf with the books by color and the bits of vintage cameras and such is gorgeous and really brightens your room. This inspires me to do something similar so thank you!

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  9. It is beautiful!! I love color-coded bookcases. Gorgeous. Do you just sit in front of it and look at it all day? I would!

    How Sweeter It Is

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  10. The before looks cute but in a lived in, home-ey warm kind of way but the after is so lovely looking I love how it's color coordinated.

    http://heatherfrostx.blogspot.com/

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  11. I love how you organized your books by color! Your bookcase looks like it should be in a magazine!

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  12. You are way too good... those books by color are amazing!

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  13. We have one the of those too but ours just has the cubes and not a space for the TV. I love it! It keeps our DVD's out of reach from the little ones. Both our boys have the smaller one (i think 8 cubies) in each of their bedrooms:)
    They are great for storing toys in bins and baskets. Your shelf looks awesome, love the color organization.

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  14. This looks amazing! I love the colour themes. I have tried that with my books but I always come back to organizing by genre. Maybe I should try colour within genre?? Hmm now my brain is working....

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  15. oh my god i LOVE the rainbow color coordination of the books! it all looks fabulous!

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  16. Wow it looks gorgeous now. Love how you color coded everything so it looks like a rainbow.

    I'm having a $100 dollar Shopbop giftcard GIVEAWAY on my blog! Come check it out :) It's open to international bloggers as well.

    Collections Giveaway

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  17. the vinyl shelving apparatus looks fab! oh your vinyl collection. that's how i discovered the beatles albums.i'd check out their records from the library.that was before the library replaced them with cd's. your vinyl collection is like our wall of cd's we no longer listen to because they've been replaced by iPods.

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  18. Thanks so much for the kind words everyone! It was a fun project. :)

    xo,
    m

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  19. I love that! the rainbow effect !!!!so cut

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