Hi! I am following up on Monday’s post with more on our new shelves. I am a bit obsessed with them. I had fallen into a trap in with those Elfa shelves and not even realized it. When we moved in, we immediately unpacked all of our “shelf stuff” onto the two sets of shelves and there it alllll sat. All the way up to the ceiling on both sides of the dark fireplace. WHY SO MUCH STUFF??

  

When we took them down to paint the walls, we realized what could be if we just didn’t put them up.  It dawned on me that we could use the matching shelving units on both sides of the fireplace. They are two types of the Ikea Vittsjo – we actually got this one, the single tower, last fall to use as a bar, and ran to get this one, the double tower, Sunday morning. They are tall enough, and airy aaand black. So what’s a girl to do? Break out the spray paint!

Supplies

• Ikea Vittsjo Shelving Units
• 5 cans Rustoleum Bright Coat Metallic Spray in Gold

I used a few light coats of my current favorite gold spray paint (of those that I have used) which gave the shelves a beautiful warm gold finish. Here is the one we had already with one coat. I decided to paint them after putting them together. I could have saved a little paint, maybe a can, by spraying all of the pieces before putting them together but that would give me infinitely more opportunities to scratch or smudge the finish. I would definitely recommend going this route. This particular paint dried extremely quickly, which is something I love about it.

Once the walls and the spackle filling the Elfa hardware holes was dry, we moved the shelves inside. And I all but died of happiness.

I got to work putting everything back together. The things on the bar shelves didn’t change much, but I did move the glassware to a higher shelf and moved the cocktail mixing stuff lower to lighten the top a bit. You can also see that at some point in the paint fume fueled frenzy that was last weekend, the console table that the tv sits on got a couple quick coats of green paint. No more red!

The other side needed WAY more editing and fussing. I started by putting all of the books in the bookshelves behind the couch. Yes, that couch table is really just an empty Ikea Expedit. Now, not so empty.

After a few tv shows worth of fussing, this is where I ended up. There will definitely be more tweaking, but it is about a million times better. It includes a few of my prized possessions, like the wave radio that I got in 1999.

 

And finally, the whole thing.

XO,

Julia