Prettying up Bookcases

Hello lovely people of the blogging world! I've been MIA for the past couple of weeks and not even a holiday tan to account for my absence. I could tell you all about how much it’s been raining here in the south of England but I won’t bore you with that.  Instead this post is about much prettier things, like wallpaper and bookcases and ignoring the pouring rain outside!

A walk in wardrobe is probably every woman’s dream. I don’t consider myself to be any kind of fashion diva, but I’d still love a walk-in devoted to my own personal clothing and all the paraphernalia that goes with dressing oneself.  Walking into a room fitted with wonderful shelving with rows of shoes, handbags, jewellery and lots of lovely space for storing pretty things would feel terribly RHBH, (for those who don’t watch; Real Housewives of Beverley Hills!) I've always loved the open shelving concept, and indeed I've spent some considerable time pinning pictures on Pinterest of pretty shelving, drooling over what will never be…. Although I don’t think open plan shelving is for everyone.  Not for the clutter bugs, the ones who drop clothing on the floor, leave shoes in each room and a trail of underwear behind them and generally love living in what they might call organised chaos.  This kind of openness is for those who by their own admission call themselves ‘neat freaks’. And I mean that in the nicest possible way!

Angelgirl is one such lady and so when she suggested that she wanted to change her little box room into a walk in dressing room, using billy bookcases, I couldn't resist asking if we could pretty them up a little so they didn't just look like shoes on a bookcase.   The room already has an antique oak dressing table which I grudgingly painted out in Annie Sloan last year to save it getting sent off to charity (I know sacrilege right?!!), boxes full of shoes and a clothing rail, so it was halfway there just not looking very coordinated.

We used Ikea Billy Bookcases and Sophie Conran’s Hibiscus wallpaper in the pink colourway. We lay down the backing, measured the wallpaper, cut and then brushed the wallpaper glue directly onto the backing. Have to say the easiest and quickest wallpapering ever! However, we didn't take into consideration the thickness of wallpaper and the width of the groove it needed to fit in. (We were too busy getting excited but these lovely shelves to worry about the details!) So with a lot of pushing and pulling, we finally managed to get the backing to clip into the grooves on the back shelf.  We hammered in a few nails for good measure and started on the second bookcase. When we covered the second backing we left around 0.5cm on each side so that it would slide into the grooves without the extra thickness of the wallpaper getting in the way. It worked perfectly!

The rest of the room is yet to be done. Mirrors need to go up and more wallpaper to match the shelving and a new lick of paint on the dressing table, but here’s a few photos so far.

Because shelving looks really boring with just rows and rows of shoes or clothing, we broke it up by adding some decor items already in her house, a jewellery stand, a photo or two, a PARIS print and momentoes from a recent trip to Paris.  

A few resources: The PARIS print comes from Made By Girl by Jen Ramos and the small gold pineapple you can get from Rockett St George. The White and gold honeycombe tealight holder comes from Papillon in Brighton. The White ceramic apple with the gold leaf comes from TKMaxx. The gold hand holding the rings, is a mould of my daughter's hand made by her father.

So it started off looking like this:

And now they look like this:

I've got some more loveliness coming up in the bedroom shortly, have been waiting for months for this...

Take care!

Sharon