Art can only do so much for your wall—sometimes a towering piece of furniture needs to step in and give a room dimension. This weekend we built bookshelves in our bedroom and the space is starting to feel complete. Granted shelves aren’t exactly furniture but with my vintage desk–together they become a commanding secretary. Plus, my workspace feels so much more dignified with a proper library stacked above it. I knew the shelves would add the height, storage, and depth I was looking for but the pleasant surprise has been the books’ pop of color. The covers’ and spines’ range of hues and patterns adds a little kick to the bedroom’s cool palette.
The Process
We actually bought these Ikea shelves (Ekby Hensvik beveled boards and Robert brackets) months ago but something about drilling massive holes in our 110-year-old wall gave us reason to pause and procrastinate.
The brackets’ pre-drilled holes seemed so dinky to be holding up a few dozen books so we drilled larger holes to accommodate bigger screws–but even those would need extra reinforcement. Enter toggle bolt.
This is a toggle bolt: a super strong spring-loaded metal stopper that folds flush around a screw, which snaps open when it passes through drywall, keeping heavy mounted-objects from falling forward. We originally sought them out after our medicine cabinet came crashing down on my mother during her inaugural visit to our home. Shes fine–no real harm done–but I’ll never trust plastic-expansion anchors again.
The toggle bolts, held tight with long machine screws, go into the top and bottom of the bracket.
These simple brackets are quite sculptural and what I love about them most is, they extend low enough to work as bookends for the lower shelf.
My vintage dresser was originally our media console—partly because it was charming in our living room and secondly, it was a bit too dirty to be holding clothes. But when our 46″ TV came into the picture, our 42″ inch dresser had to return to its original duties. Now how to handle peeling wood veneer and the odd soot stains. . . .Yes, hardware store drawer liners would’ve been the easy route—but you know, that’s just not my style. Wallpapering on the other hand, the chicest and most difficult approach, was the choice I went with. We had tons leftover from 
The dresser as the temporary media center. The plan was to hinge the front drawers forward for the DVD player and stash our movies and remotes in the drawers below–not this mess stashed between the legs.
To get the dresser ready for the bedroom, I dug up our wallpaper paste, measured the drawers, cut the sheets to size, and began. Since the paper was just going to lie in drawers, I figured I didn’t need prime the drawers—wrong assumption. Always prime.
The original seam roller was long gone so I grabbed some Chinese spices from the rack and smoothed out the bubbles that way.
While I was wallpapering, I threw the bedroom desk drawer into the scheme.
At the time, I thought I was crazy putting myself through this decorative labor but each time I open my drawers, I smile. Having a pop of color and a burst of pattern emerge from a seemingly white piece is a priceless element of surprise. It speaks to the bold accent wall across the room, but in a subtle way. The little things can make a room.
I recently found the perfect bed frame at IKEA—or so I thought. I spotted it across the showroom floor: simple white, feminine shape, and IKEA-inexpensive. Then I came closer. The frame had massive carved tulips and hearts all over it! Shocked, slightly disgusted, and totally disappointed, we moved on to the next aisle. As Mike and I rounded the corner, I took one last look at the over-sized child’s bed and noticed it was smooth on the back. Hmmmm. What if we could built it inside out? No one would have to see the pre-school graffiti and we’d have the simple bed I thought it was. It was a gamble but we bought it and started building.
