Bookshelf Build by the Stairs

I'm not sure how everyone else's quarantine is going, but if you can't tell from my past few posts (cute box upcycle, shirt turned into shorts, dress turned into shirt and skirt), I'm doing alright. Honestly, it's the things in my house you should be more worried for. Haha!

Really though, with lots of things closed down, things didn't change too much for us. My kids missed playing with friends (And let's be honest. I missed them playing with friends to...), we missed the library, and as I've mentioned in too many posts, I miss the thrift store. 

Buuut, with all the time that I can't go out, I finally got the nerve to start a project I've been planning for much too long. 

In the end, it was John helping me that finally made me start all the hard stuff. I didn't want to begin until I was completely ready. But after I had all the materials and measurements and planned it all out, it was still too intimidating to make the first cut... So John did for me. Lol. And pretty soon after, it was done!

Since our house already had a weird plant holder thing in this giant empty box built in by the stairs, I was planning to keep the giant box and just turn it into a bookshelf.

A few years ago, David helped me take all the fake plants, and then rocks, and then dirt out of the metal planter (Yes, I really have been planning this for that long!).

Once everything was marked, John cut along the top of what would be the hole for our shelves. Then we cut out the rest of the bookshelf holes and removed the support pieces in the middle since we wouldn't need those. I added two wood pieces to fill in the holes that were made for the planter to fit into and then we started building the shelves.

(And here's little Aaron being his usual helpful self while we were checking if the board would fit. 😊)

I used MDF and nailed in two side pieces at first before nailing the bottom "base" piece on top of those. I repeated this to make the middle shelf and added two side pieces on top of that as well. I ended up not adding a top board to fill in the hole since it would waste wood and isn't really needed.

Instead of cutting everything at first and then assembling, it helped me to only cut the pieces I was immediately putting in. That way, my measurements were definitely what I wanted. I know that's definitely a beginner way of doing things, but that's exactly what I am when it comes to carpentry...

I sanded the edges of the wood a tiny bit and painted the rest of it white.

For the top board, we picked up a 1 x 12 x 8 ft board and stained it in the garage. It was a honey chestnut color stain that I added two coats of. I then used a sealant spray to coat it 4 times in our driveway. After it was dried and aired out, John screwed it in for me using the little edge of wood that was left in the top from it's past function as a plant holder. The last step was to caulk around all the edges and we were finished!

Once it was done, I went around the house finding random things I could use to decorate it. Most of them were in places I didn't think they really worked well in, so it's nice to be able to have a place for them now! 

A couple of fun details...

The picnic basket was from my Grandpa Cail who served in the US army during World War 2. I love having small pieces of family history in my home! Since I'm a little too nervous a real picnic would break it with my kids so young, it currently holds our piano, guitar, and violin music.

The cute box I made is now holding wax melts for our scentsy. Our kids have gotten into it a ton just to smell them and the paper hasn't peeled yet! Fingers crossed it won'r or I'll have to come at it with mod podge.😬

This brown file holder I got from Target and I love it! It's a functional way to organize our mail and other papers but it's also lightweight and doesn't put all the papers and junk on display too openly.

It's so nice to have this project done! 

The kids have been watching me move things around in it so much while deciding where to put things, that they want to do it too (I'm pretty sure Aaron thinks that's all we built it for. Lol.). So for the next few weeks, I will be rearranging their rearrangements until they think we're done and they can move on to helping me with something else. 

With how much they've been wanting to help me with this bookshelf, maybe my next project should be "learning to put away our toys". 

It's worth a shot. Haha!