Basement Shelving Redesign

Welcome to the second installment during Basement Week! You have already seen the basement tour and the reveal of the new basement curtains and now I have another reveal for you. No, it is not the whole room reveal. I am still working on putting the room back together, using all the same furniture but in a way more decorated and put together way. It is turning out to be a slow process. This post shows a project in the room and also gives you a sneak peek of the new color. Sigh, can I tell you how great it is? I can’t wait to show you.

Anyways, the project that I tackled were the corner shelves by the fire place. As you will see in the pictures, the shelves are a very old style with their braided edges. They just aren’t the most appealing in our taste. What we really want is to do a built in bookcase, string some rope light in it, trim it out so you can’t see the rope light, and have a softly lit built in. Add that to the project list, because this is what it looks like.

These pictures show a hint of the new color – especially when you look at the corner where you can see the contrast. You see, I decided not to paint around the shelves because we are planning on ripping them down and because that would just a lot of work. I hope this project will jump to the front of the list so it doesn’t leave an unfinished corner for a while. I did think it was worth it to try and dress up the shelves just using everything we have. As you can see, it is kind of just a stashing place to all of Eric’s car magazines.

When I do these reorganizing projects I like to just take it all off so I have a fresh start.

It does create quite the mess in the process though. I just like it because it allows you to look at the space differently – and also at the items. It isn’t just moving things around on a shelf, it is placing them carefully. Seriously, it is just like playing!

So after perusing around the items I took off (with the challenge I gave myself to utilize all the magazines in a stylish way) and the ones in other storage places around the basement I just started placing items on the space. I usually start with the big items and then fill them in. If it doesn’t gel with your eye, just move it. So after my “playing” this is what it ended up looking like. A stylish corner using only things we had!

Just to recap, here is the before and after shots again.