This may need a drum roll...
ditditditditditditdit
rat-tat-tat
ting!
That was my drum roll.
The bookcase is FINISHED!
You have no idea how long I have wanted to say this. Well, maybe you do. I first posted about this in March, the old bookcase was demolished on New Year’s Eve… errrr day. I don’t remember, maybe too much champagne but it was then that the dinky original built-in bookcase came down and yes folks, it is now the end of August and literally it just got finished and frantically decorated today.
When we first moved into this house, the bookcase annoyed me. It just never looked tall enough next to the floor-to-ceiling fireplace. It had over a foot of plaster above it and a couple inches of plaster on each side and it just bugged me. I envisioned a floor-to-ceiling bookcase that butted up to the fireplace to the left and went to the edge of the wall on the right.
It took me awhile to come up with a design of shelving that worked with a lot of our knickknacks and books. I first designed the options on the computer and then took to my handy-dandy painters tape to make it to scale in the space... more than once.
Weather delays not being able to work on this in the garage and having an uneven ceiling made this project go on way too long but now its done!!
I have been hemming and hawing about what to do about the 3 little stone shelf mantels that jet out of the fireplace. The MCM purist in me says to keep them but the interior decorator in me kinda hates them. They are impossible to decorate without looking cluttered and being next to a bookcase that already has a lot going on, well, I feel like my initial idea to chisel them off (rat-tat-tat) and building an A-symetrical wood mantel that starts at the left edge of the fireplace opening and beomes one of the bookshelves is back on the table. My huband will love reading this, I am sure. Get out the tools.
Right now I have some candleholders up there and its ok, I can live with it for right now but I can picture a cool piece of art up there on one lovely long wood mantel.
Anyways, I digress. Where was I? Oh yes, finished bookcase… yes. So now my fun part, the decorating!
This weekend I pulled out everything from a back room that hadn't seen the light of day for more than a year and a half when we packed everything up to start the renovations. I had forgotten what I had!
It wasn't easy but I think I came up with a curation I can live with.
Around the corner of the bookcase is a 4ft wall that used to have some art and a wine cabinet but when we remodeled and added the staircase a few feet from this wall, it was awkward to have furniture there so I had the grand idea to just have a large painting there eventually and I had the even better idea to paint it myself. It is so hard to paint something for yourself when you have a specific place you need it to fill.
That canvas stayed blank for a few months. I couldn’t commit to what I wanted to do. But then 2 weeks ago I replenished my paint supplies and last weekend I was determined to get ‘er done. Normally I would be down in my studio painting but due to the size and not having a clue what I was going to come up with, I decided to paint on site so I could keep walking to other parts of the house and stare at it from all angles... obsess... paint over it... obsess some more... oh and I got to use my entire dining room table as paint-central so that made it overly convenient to mix up tons of different shades.
and here is the final piece, 3ftx5ft
-------------------------------------------------------------------
