bookshelves & the evolution of our living room.

Well the living room is officially finished. The most finished it’s been in 7 years.

But before I show you, let’s take a little trip down memory lane, shall we?

 

2013

We bought our house in July 2013. We bought it as a house we liked, not loved. It was one we could afford. And it had good bones. We bought it with a vision of growing it into a house that suited our family exactly.

When we first saw the far wall of our long, spacious living room, we thought, That’s a great spot for built-in bookcases!

They were fresh on our mind, because we had built-ins in our Elmwood Park rental, and fell in love with them. It made us happy to be able to see all our books in one place.

 

We painted our new living room a fresh, dusky green, hung Roman shades that my mom and I made together, and moved in with our hodge-podge of furniture shipped from India and hand-me-downs. Look at that cute four-year-old!

 

Also, I may have forgotten to mention we were simultaneously planting a church three miles away in downtown Columbia. So we decided that living room built in bookcases were a dream that could wait. Cue an IKEA trip for pine bookshelves.

 

2014

We made them look pretty and enjoyed our sunny reading nook for three years.

 

2015

In 2015, I attempted my first ever Pinterest project, and made a book page wreath out of a foam wreath from Hobby Lobby, hot glue, and pages ripped from old books. Can you believe that we still have it, five years later? It’s now hanging in our bedroom.

2015 was also the year we adopted Gabe and Noah. So after that, home improvement projects moved to the back burner for quite awhile.

 

 

I love the above picture, because it contains my first ever large house plant (thanks, Mom!). I managed to keep it alive for quite awhile, knowing next to nothing about plants. You have to start somewhere.

 

2017

Fast forward two years to 2017, and we added a master bedroom onto the house. It was lovely to finally have two bathrooms.

Look at these cuties!

 

 

We had to shift our bookcase to this wall because we needed the seating on that far wall, which meant we lost some of the width. And it didn’t feel like a statement piece anymore. I missed that wall of color-coded books that you noticed right when you walked in the front door. But it was worth it for a new bedroom!

 

I thought I’d add a glimpse of our old kitchen. Remember? It served us well for many years.

 

The white chair above was in my home growing up, and the buffet was given to me when my aunt’s mother passed away. I painted it white and still get compliments on it all the time. The large art print was a garage sale find.

I’m showing you the slow evolution of our living room to say that you rarely ever need to do a whole overhaul. One of the biggest decorating skills I’ve learned over the years of home ownership  (and am still learning) is how to make do with what I have and then tweak it to make it feel fresh and pretty.

 

Here are some more cuties!

 

2018

In 2018, I grew into my rug passion. I’ve had lots of trial and error with rugs over the years, which I shared back in this post.

Mostly, I chose rugs that were two small, and I also chose impractical rugs. Ones that bunched up and slid around and were a general nuisance. Part of it is that’s what I could afford at the time.

 

But I also learned how to shop smarter. RugsUSA is still my very favorite place to buy rugs. The living room rug above has gotten a tremendous amount of wear and tear over the past two years. It’s faded now, but still looks great.

I try to choose rugs in forgiving colors. And I’ve learned to invest in rug pads. They truly do help with slipping.

David now says, “Watch out for Julie. If you aren’t careful she’ll put a rug on every square inch of the floor.”

 

But as you can see here, I didn’t replace my rugs all at once.

If something bugs you about your house, my recommendation is to find one thing you can change, right now. Figure out your budget, then focus on that one thing. I invested in a nice big rug for the sofa area, because that’s where we spend the most time. It was nearly two years later that I replaced the above rug.

 

2019

Last year we remodeled our kitchen. It’s still a gift and a joy to us every day.

But because we wanted to keep our dining room sideboard, that meant we lost the wall of bookshelves altogether.

The IVAR book cases went into the attic, and I crammed our books into every nook and cranny possible, leaving some boxed up in the attic. We knew it wasn’t a long-term solution to our book problem, but it was good enough.

We were biding our time until we could finally build some real bookcases.

This is the only recent picture I could find of the living room. Us watching David preach on YouTube during quarantine!

 

2020

And that brings us to today. July, 2020. Seven years to the month since we bought our house.

Since he’s been swamped with work, David hired our builder, Scott, to come build me bookshelves for an anniversary gift.

I’d seen an idea on Instagram that intrigued me — one long bookshelf around the wall up near the ceiling. It felt so risky. But I wanted to try. I loved the idea of keeping our walls free for seating. Scott liked the plan and ordered the wood that week. We stained and sealed it, then he came back to hang the shelves.

 

And here they are!

 

It was a happy, happy afternoon two weeks ago when Scott was finished and I could gather books from all corners of our home and arrange them all in one place. I have them generally grouped by genre: biography, non-fiction, theology, fiction, and classic literature. I did have to fill in some cracks, but it’s amazing to finally, after years, be able to see them all together.

Books are truly our friends, and hold so many memories for David and me. Some have traveled across the world and back with us. Some of them I’ve had since childhood.

I was also thrilled to discover I had extra space, and drove down the road to our favorite thrift store, His House, to buy four boxes of books (some of which, I must admit, are books that I donated to His House).

This means our living room library has room to expand.

 

So, the details. The bookshelves run along three walls.

Two questions I’ve been getting it: How are they hung? And, Do they make the room feel smaller?

The answer to the first is that they’re hung by brackets which are attached to the top of the boards, rather than underneath. Scott spaced the brackets out every three feet and drilled them to the studs, so they feel very secure.

 

He did an amazing job. The corners look flawless.

They actually don’t make the room feel smaller. We have 8-foot ceilings, and it just feels warm and cozy. Amie said, “Mom, I like that our living room feels kind of cabin-y now.”

We’re thrilled with the fresh coat of paint (Sherwin Williams Anew Gray on the walls, Benjamin Moore Simply White trim).

 

As you can see, I also moved the TV from the middle of the living room to this wall. Once I did it, I wondered why in the world we waited so long. I think I felt that it was weird having a TV in the entryway space. But you don’t really notice it when you walk into the room. Your eyes travel into the living room. And having the TV against a wall makes the room feel much more open.

 

My friend Annie gets the credit for my replacing the sofa that was here with two armchairs and the cedar chest. That sofa has been literally falling apart for a couple of years now. It was officially the last piece of our India furniture that we bought 10 years ago. It was time to say good-bye.

 

We replaced the sofa with a blue loveseat from Wayfair, which fits that wall much better. I shopped my back porch for the reading lamp and end table.

 

I never take on a decorating project on my own. My friends Annie and Ashley helped me this summer. They’re both far more creative than I am, and I love learning from them.

 

This weekend I went to IKEA for some furniture for Judah and Amie’s rooms (more on that to come), and I treated myself to a plant stand. I’ve wanted one for that little hallway ever since it was finished three years ago. It’s also the perfect place to store David’s much-used gardening books.

 

It makes me happy every time I see it, especially with that India poster. Because India is where I started getting captivated by house plants.

 

It was Ashley’s idea to hang a plant from the bookshelf, and I bought this side table from her last week.

 

We also said good-bye to the Roman shades that were hanging at the windows, and are trying a curtain-free approach right now, to let in more light. We live on a quiet street so don’t feel like we need the privacy. We’ll see how it feels in the winter when it gets dark at 5:30.

 

My Pinterest wreath may not be hanging in this space anymore, but the stick-and-tassle art is a DIY project that Ashley and I did with our girls this summer.

 

And that’s it, my friends!

We feel so happy with this room. And ready to just relax and live in it. We’ve truly reached the point where everything in this space is either useful or meaningful in some way. The room now wholly feels like us. It was worth all the waiting and the learning and the work.

One more time:

July, 2013:

 

 

July, 2020: