BUILT-IN SHELVES: THE WORK

Cabinets (smaller ones) and bookcase makeover's are the most common and easy to tweak. And soft on the wallets too.

I shared the before pictures and the reason for this cabinet makeover here.

On a Saturday morning, we removed the upper cabinet. The cabinet was hung with screws and was pretty easy to remove. I did not click the pictures during the process. Once removed, the space looked like this:

Most of our projects are done on the weekends (Weekendtweaks???)...ok, most of the tweaks are carried out on weekends. So I do it in phases. Like, I picked the shelves and other supplies from Lowe's the previous weekend.

Now, I should introduce you to Tony from Lowes. For the past couple years, every time I have visited Lowe's, Tony has helped me with cutting the wood, or finding the supplies I wouldn't find, or with some suggestions for my projects. So he does need an introduction here.

I had picked two of the 97 inches long white shelf board and had it cut to my measurement which was 48 inches. And I had also picked the L-brackets to hold the shelves.

L-Bracket

Once the upper cabinet was removed, I had the L-brackets screwed to the wall. I had 4 shelf boards and when we did the measurement for placing the shelves 4 looked too crowded so went with just 3 .

Up until this point, I had not made up my mind if I wanted to paint the wall white or a different color or use wall paper or wrapper as wallpaper.
I spread this gift wrapper first.

And then this orange and white stripe wrapper.

When I checked with Mr. Tweaks, he responded saying "Looks good." Sometimes, he plays too safe. I decided to go with white paint for now and could always go back to changing to either wallpaper or different paint color later.
I went ahead and primed the walls. This is after primer.

Then, painted 2 coats of white paint. And when the paint dried, I hung the shelves.

That afternoon, we had an event to attend to. And when we returned later in the evening, I went ahead and styled the shelves.

I just shopped around the house. I did like how it looked but something kept bothering me. It stayed like this for few weeks.

Then one evening during the week, I came home and went on to work on the top of the lower cabinet.

I taped the border of the cabinet and sanded the top.

Wiped the dust and stained the wood. I had this Bombay Mahogany stain left over from couple of other projects that I am yet to share here.

I had to do 3 coats of the stain. The stain has strong odor. There is no ventilation in this part of the house. It was late in the evening and I had to open the windows in the adjoining Guest bedroom to let the fresh air in.

Lesson learnt: Do your projects in the weekend.

The next post will reveal the final tweak.
Happy Friday and have a great weekend.
Thanks for reading.
Reshma