Bookcase Makeover

I'm a book collector. I'm pretty sure you all know that about me!

However, I've found myself needing more shelves for our books. Being a homeschooler who utilizes "living books" for the majority of my teaching, having books at our easy disposal is necessary.

I love using the library and we go every one or two weeks, but I always like to have good, solid books on hand in case we get a last minute urge to learn about "this or that." And I can honestly say that almost every single book I've bought for the kids and for our homeschool has been purchased at thrift stores or used. Our local thrift shop has days where you can fill a basket with books for $1.00. You better believe I take advantage of that!

We've had a bookcase in our basement since we built our house. I wish I would I would have taken a "before" picture but I was in "the zone" painting and didn't want to stop to go upstairs and get the camera.

So I took a pic of it later in the day, but I took a pic of the back to show you what it looked like. Only it had a dark colored wood stain on the front.


After some sanding, several coats of primer, and several more coats of white paint, we had this...


But I had those holes in the back. I needed a way to cover them up so I went to Michael's and picked up some fun, colorful scrapbooking paper and lined the back of the shelves with it. (I used hot glue to attach the paper; I wanted it to be temporary so I could change out the paper in the future if I wanted.)



But then there were the seams, so I ran ribbon down the seams.



I like it. And I like that some of my books are actually out where I use them the most. I still need to fill the shelves up a bit more. Actually I only put these books on to see how it would look. Right now, all the books and other things are piled in front of the bookcase because I want to make sure the paint loses all of its tackiness before I put things on it for good!

Unfortunately, my awesome antique dresser that belonged to my father-in-law and that we rescued from their basement had to be moved elsewhere to make room for the bookcase. So, I moved it out into the entryway, moved the bench that used to be in the entryway down into the hallway in the finished part of our basement, and now we have this in our entryway...

And it feels fresh and new so we're all enjoying the look!

Have a blessed day!


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