Updating a Built-In Bookcase

Did I ever tell you that when my hubby and I were house hunting we found our home in three days? Well, we did, and it was really a miracle how it all worked out.  (Long story warning…feel free to skip down past the first picture)

If you don’t already know it, my husband is a pastor. We were in the process of being hired at our church when I was pregnant with our fourth child. We looked extensively online for housing in the city where the church is, but weren’t coming up with anything we liked. It is 600 miles from where we lived at the time so we planned a quick, three-day trip to look at houses.

The first day was a bust. We went from house to house feeling more and more disappointed with each one. We thought we might have to rent for a while, but I really didn’t want to move twice (especially with a new infant and three young children) unless absolutely necessary. We kept praying that God would lead us to the right house. After a full day of touring houses and not finding anything, we returned to the place we were staying feeling pretty down.

I started looking online and immediately found a house that I loved. LOVED. But we could not figure out how we had never seen it before.  It was late, so I sent an email to our realtor whom we had known for a full 12 hours. Amazingly, he was able to get us into the house the next morning. Long story short(er), we fell in love with it immediately. We put an offer on it and by the time we flew home two days later, our offer had been accepted. We later found out that although we had searched online for months before flying out to look in person, we never saw our house because it wasn’t in our price range. The price dropped literally right before we arrived, and was then in our budget. The miracle in it was not only did God drop that house in our laps at the perfect timing, we offered quite a bit less and the offer was accepted without a counter-offer. We were certain this was the house for us.

We have enjoyed it very much since we moved in and thankfully have had very few “major” issues. It’s not in the “fixer-upper” category, but it is definitely in need of updating. It’s about 50 years old and some things are really showing their age.  We’ve been working on it as the budget allows.

One of my favorite rooms in the house is the family room. It’s not a huge room and has a cozy, rustic feel; perfect for the cold winters we have. I love the fireplace hearth, the long mantel, and the beams in the ceiling. But, I do not love the blue carpet, and some other outdated parts of the room.  I’m working on updating it and will be sharing the progress with you.

One sort of strange space in the room is a recessed built in bookcase/writing desk area. I do not love the look of it. At all. In fact, we actually thought about framing that space and putting up a wall in front of it. But after living with it for a while, I started to like the storage in it.

Unfortunately, it’s just been kind of a “dumping ground” for miscellaneous books and videos. Yes, we may be among the vast minority of people that actually still have VHS tapes, but I refuse to re-purchase all those kid videos that my kids have just about outgrown. But, as you can see, it’s a clutter nightmare in there! I almost never open those doors and you can see why. No matter how many times I’ve straightened it, the kids just toss the videos back in every which way. I decided it was finally the time to tackle this job and de-clutter!

I started by removing everything and wiping it down.  I don’t think the back wall of that bookcase has been painted since the house was built.  Your eyes are not deceiving you – it is a color of green that I don’t even know how to describe.

One of the best parts of this update was getting rid of 90% of those tapes!  There’s no time like an update to de-clutter!

I started by painting it with primer since the wood was stained.  It felt so much cleaner almost immediately!

I put on some new hardware to keep in line with the rest of the room.  I’m thrilled with how it turned out.

Tomorrow I’m going to show you how I organized it.  I de-cluttered, moved things to better places, and styled it to match my tastes.  I can’t wait to show you!

I also love how my fall shelf turned out this year.  Here are a few close up shots for you.

I love this verse and I think it goes perfectly with the story of finding our house.  The Lord truly is loving and faithful and cares about the details of our lives.

See you tomorrow for some bookcase organization!  Happy November!