Black and White and Grey All Over

I just cannot get enough of this image...

Source

I am absolutely loving the greyed out wood floors, and the perfectly imperfect dining room table, and all the lovely muted colors.... but what I really love the most is the awesome bookshelf in the background.  Totally unassuming, but so cool - a little industrial, a little classic, a little natural. It's amazing.

I've seen lots of bookshelves with patterned backs - using wallpaper, fabric, wrapping paper... but I really love how the back of this bookcase has simple planks of wood.  The greyed out, light wood allows all the accessories on the shelves to take center stage, but while they are a "quiet" muted slate for displaying the contents of the shelves, I think that they bring something really special to this bookshelf...

I also love that the shelves of this bookshelf are made out of the same cool muted wood (or is it "wood"... so hard to tell!).

After admiring this bookshelf for a while, I started brainstorming how to recreate this awesome bookshelf, and came up with a game plan.

The bookshelf in this picture looks A LOT like the Vittsjo Shelving unit from Ikea...

The problem, is that since the Vittsjo is made of a lightweight metal, it's would require some serious skillz to securely hang rustic wooden planks from the back.  I'm actually not convinced that it would really work out... it seems like a terrible idea to mount heavy wood planks on one side of a light weight frame.  I can just picture that thing toppling over.

So, to avoid DIY catastrophe, I say that using actual wood is out... going to plan b, I'm thinking something sturdy but lightweight like particle board would be a MUCH better bet. It's cheap, so all you would need are a few long sheets at Home Depot (they can measure and cut to size for you)!

Once you have a long piece of particle board cut to size, it's time to get creative.

Queue up the Faux Bois Rocker...

This one is Martha Stewart, but I'm sure there are others out there...  doesn't look like much, but it creates the COOLEST EFFECTS.  It's to be used much like a paint roller to create the cool look of wood, on flat surfaces... walls, dressers, foors, shelves... you get the idea.

Here are a few good examples of a faux bois finish...

Pretty awesome, right??

The last photo comes from Little Green Notebook, and she has a FABULOUS tutorial on how to create this effect.

OKKK - now that we've gone down the faux bois rabbit hole... I'll continue.

Create this finish (perhaps more subtly) on the MDF / particle board, screw holes in the bookshelf and attache the boards to the back.

So easy, and likely $100 for the entire project (or less if you are able to find a Vittsjo on Craigslist).

I REALLLLYYYYYY want to try this now!

Sneak Peek: Dark Bookshelves

I was a busy bee last night... taping and painting, and watching the Olympics :-)  This is a fuzzy, late night preview, and the colors here are completely warped (no, the backs are not NEARLY this dark) but the bookshelf makeover turned out FABULOUS!!  Better pics to come!

Bookshelf Revamp

Using the pictures below, can you guess what is happening at our house this weekend??  The bookshelf in our dining room is getting a bit of a face-lift!  Ever since I saw the number Emily A Clark (my new design crush) did on her office bookshelves, I keep noticing dark backings on bookshelves everywhere, and I want some of my own!


Recently
I looooove the color on these two bookshelves (above and below) - the paint is an inky blue, which is so rich and pretty.  My fear with mirroring this type of color is that it won't "go" with the existing colors in the dining room.  The room is currently painted a light powdery aqua, I don't feel like the almost navy would compliment it... maybe I'm totally wrong?


Luxe and Lilies

These next two bookshelves are a bit closer to the color I'm going for - its a dark grey - a true grey, so it will make the back of the bookshelves quite dark.  A good contrast against the books we've got in there, however I'm realizing that while we've got quite a few books, they aren't ideal for staging a bookshelf.  There are no cute bindings, and not a ton of variation in color.

I'm also realizing that our bookshelf is quite a bit more functional than any of these here (coral overload in the photo below).  Ours will still have to be functional - living in a small apartment, we need somewhere to store our books, so this bookshelf can't just be a vehicle to store cool stuff (For example... that egg below on a pedestal... A mini globe... Tortoise shells... A scull...)

Worst case scenario?? I just wasted $15 bucks on paint.  No big loss :-)

Wish me luck!

Little Green Notebook


Emily A. Clark


Emily A. Clark