Anything On Paper

I am proud to say Project Shelf Makeover is now done! It took us three whole days to finish everything, from sanding the bookcase to painting it, sorting all our books, documents, CDs and trinkets and putting them all back to the shelf again. The whole project wasn’t only about refurbishing an old furniture, it also allowed us to re-examine what were the things that we needed to let go of in order to save space.

Before:

During:

After:

It’s no designsponge, but it’s a start, and I’m really proud of the improvement. 

The challenge of this whole shelf makeover thing is not painting the furniture itself, but sorting all our stuff, cleaning them, and putting them all back in the shelf. We have tons of books, CDs, DVDs and random shiznit, and we ended up putting half of them in a box to be sold in a garage sale. It was exhilarating to say goodbye to all those things that we deemed important before but are no longer useful to us now.

Found my old water colours and oil pastels inside the shelf’s bottom cabinet

Old film rolls that need to be archived properly

Goodbye old stuff! It’s time for a garage sale!

In putting things back together, similar to grocery shelf marketing strategy, you put the less used books at the top and bottom shelf and the often-read books at the middle shelf so that they are easier to take out and put back. Hence, my mom’s medical books and my old computer text books were put waaaay up at the top, while the general fiction and art books were arranged in the middle.

Ever since I started this project, I’ve been excited to further do some improvements in our place by looking around the house and checking what other furniture needs refurbishing and what part of our home is due for purging. We have tons of stuff to do then:

1. China/porcelain shelf in the dining room - 

2. Divider between the family room and the dining room

3. Magazine shelf

4. Kitchen cabinets

I know it will take a lot of time and money to rearrange everything and make things more pleasing to the eye, but I have the rest of the year ahead to plan this out. Plus, the whole creative process is so much fun!

Speaking of creative process, I spent the evening doing a mood board for the family room at www.olioboard.com. This is actually my first interior decorating mood board, and it’s so addicting. I love it. 

The couch, the shelf, the floor and the side tables are the key pieces that I have in the family room. I made sure that I kept the colors and textures intact in order for me to have a good gauge of what other things I can add to the room.  

Here are some olioboards that caught my eye! 

Go Red, Marilyn! by rrcmetro

Seaside Modern by rrcmetro

I think I’m gonna start making this a weekly exercise. :)