The Great Wall of Bookshelves

When we first started house shopping I knew I wanted a home with bookshelves, Jason wanted a large garage for a 'Man Cave'. Unfortunately we couldn't find a home with either of those requirements. So we compromised an got a large back yard, with a promise to put built in bookshelves at a later date, and I would park my car in the driveway so we have room for a pool table, work out bench, and couch.

 As a fellow book lover my book collection is large, not quite "Beauty and the Beast'" caliber, But we all have something we aspire to. For the past three years my book it has grown &, I've stored it in our tiny hallway linen closet. Until one night about 3am the bottom shelf that held my collection of Star Wars and Star Trek novels collapsed from the weight.  The Southern Belle fit that followed afterward wasn't pretty. But as the saying goes when one door closes another one opens. This case it was the linen closet. It was time to collect on my bookshelves.

I started searching pinterest for ideas and everyone was doing the Billy Bookshelf From IKEA hack. I loved them all especially the Makeristas version of the hack. Unfortunately the nearest Ikea is 3 hours away and the bookshelves are 100 - 150 each. Your girl has a budget people and that was breaking the bank because I needed three large ones.

So I did the next best thing...Craigslist. It took over a month of searching for bookshelves. And one Friday night I got a notification of a yard sale happening the next day that had two sets of bookshelves made from reclaimed wood. As you can guess I was up the next morning and the first to arrive. At $20 a bookcase it was a total deal for me that I didn't have to haggle. Thirty minutes later two bookshelves were disassembled and loaded into my tiny Honda Civic. 

It took me about a day to finally decided where in our house we were going to put the bookshelves. We both decided that the unused dining room would be the perfect spot. We're already planning on turning it into the home office this would be perfect. Below is the original room when we first bought it. The bookshelves would be placed on the farthest wall with the vaulted ceiling. 


 Dont you just love the peach wall color? 

Unfortunately the two bookshelves wasnt enough to cover the whole back wall so we measured that a smaller bookshelf would fill in the gap. I also knew I would eventually want either a slidding ladder or lights on the builtin. With that being said we would have to seriously mount these bad boys to the wall.

Step one: Because we're keeping the baseboards intact we had to put the bookshelfs out a few inches from the wall. It required us to place wood boards along the wall in order for the built ins to fit right and rest. 



Second: We assembled the two bookcases from the yardsale and built a smaller one for in the middle. We placed all three on stands so they would still taller instead of on the floor. We also wanted to add molding all along the edges. 





Step Three: Trying to find baseboards that match the original in our home was a pain. Thankfully we were able to find some that matched but were a little to big. Jason was skilled enough to cut an inch off the bottom. We also put molding along the sides and middle of each book case. I painted them my favorite shade of white by Behr called "White Glove" seriously guys its the perfect white.






We spent a total of $150 for this project. $40 for the large bookcases. $75 for the tiny bookcase and the rest was spent on moulding. Thankfully we already had a gallon of paint left over from painting our baseboards through out the house. 

The Vanity

I was so excited to share how my grandmother vintage vanity turned out. The moment it was finished I set up a photo shoot complete with a real baby. I would like to thank my lovely sister-in-law for letting me take some shots of her little girl.

Before you scroll down to the bottom and view all the lovely finished product I would like to tell you a little about the piece and the steps I had to take to finish it.


This is a 4 piece vanity with matching stool. It has a marble top and oval mirror with a gold key medallion on the center drawer. The stain is orange though at some point im sure it was a much richer color, due to poor storage conditions and years of neglect it's faded. There's some damage to the mirror and marble top but they're so minor you can barley see them. 

This piece also has sentimental value to me. I use to play dress up in my grandmothers room when I was little and always put on my pretend make up sitting in front of this very vanity. Now some odd years later my grandmother let me have it for our new house and it's been sitting in our storage room until I could find the inspiration for the piece.

Thankfully one day I got the inspiration needed for this piece when I was searching "Awesome Mid century Furniture".....no joke. Westelms Acorn and White Mid century desk popped up. It's gorgeous and of course it was sold out. I'm very grateful it was sold out because at $600 Jason would have me evaluated. Anyways on to the step by step process for those of you who like seeing what I had to go through.


I had to sand a majority of this piece by hand due to all the little detail. if anyone has a easier way for me to do that so I don't ruin my fingers every time please let me know. I'm all for saving my fingers.

After the entire piece was sanded down which took two days. I stained it with Miniwax wood stain in Provincial. I added some paint detail along the edges. Applied a couple of coats of poly lightly sanding between each coat.





The drawers were pretty simple. I just painted the faces in White Glove by Behr. Which is still my favorite color ever! The only problem I face with this part was the large drawer at the base of the vanity. I wanted to remove the gold lock medallion and completely smooth it out. I also need to fill the holes where the previous hardware was and put a bar pull in the center. Pain in the butt!

I had to carefully pry the medallion off and puddy the hole there and where the previous two knobs where. I know there's a hack to use bar soap to fill holes and i've done that trick on a few pieces, but this is important and I wanted to put my time and money into it for sentimental reasons so I used puddy. Using a level I measured the exact center of the drawer and attached my bar pull in the center.


If you're wondering about the new hardware because they are seriously to die for, I got them at Home Depot. They were perfect for this project and I knew I had to have them the moment I saw them. I mixed the Liberity Hallow Cabinet Knob with Liberity Bronze Bar pull.















So classic right?


If you have a piece that's dearest to your heart and cant find it in you to completely tear it apart and make something else with it. A little bit of paint and some new hardware can totaly change the look while still keeping it the same.

Master Bedroom Inspiration

I've had our master bedroom in my head since we first moved in.  I knew I wanted to go light and simple with alot of natural wood and contrasting colors (Basically I wanted it to look like adults stayed in hereand I knew just the thing to do so. When you enter our bedroom I wanted the main focus to be on the bed. Whats a better way to do that then a canopy bed. It was just my luck that the current bed we're using converts into one. SCORE!

Inline image 1


The mid-century fan in me loves a good tapered legs, and the master bedroom is the perfect space for a mid-century piece, it just says we're adults it doesn't matter if we watch Pokemon on the weekends. I've been eyeing WestElms white and acorn mid century desk but at $600 Jason might put me in the loony bin. Thankfully I have a piece in storage that I've been dying to fix up. There's so much to do in the meantime. 

Inline image 2


I've decided to not tackle decor and organization for the attached master bath and closet until after the bedroom is 100% complete. That's doesn't mean I wont go ahead and paint the walls, baseboards, & Doors. I would like to paint everything first and have a blank slate. I've been eyeing this lovely grey color by Glidden and pairing it with my favorite white from Behr. The two together will compliment each other and not draw attention away from the key pieces in the room.

As far as decor. I'm thinking a few framed pieces from some local artist, matching lamps, floral arrangements. I want to keep it simple & light but somewhat uniform. I'm looking into purchasing a wall monogram decal but there's so many great designs to choose from. I figure that when I decide on a design I'll put in my purchase, or I might just go a totally different and diy route. I'm looking for decor I can easily change out through the year, & I'm not entirely sure I want to put curtains in this room now since there will be curtains on the canopy.

How did you style your bedroom? Have you ever purchased a monogram wall decal? If so from where? So many questions pop into my head as I start this project, I can only hope Jason will love it once complete.

2015


I feel as though when 2014 ended a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. By the end of the year I vanished off the blogging world except for a few post here and there. I literally wore myself out that I had nothing left. I made some mistakes in 2014 that led to me over working myself and extinguishing my creative flame...until now!

There comes a point at the beginning of the new year where you have to sit down and re-evaluate some things. Yeah I did that both for life and for this blog. You could say they're sort of New Years Resolutions, but do you really have those for a blog. I'm just going to call them 2015 Blog goals, because 2015 Blog New Years Resolutions just doesn't sound right.

So here they're!

1. Do Me: This sounds strange but toward the middle of last year I started comparing my new blog to some of the major well established bloggers out there. I thought I needed to keep up with the amount of content they post a week. I didn't think that my weekly blog post was good enough to keep people around. I thought I needed to post 5 times a week, so once I started doing that I ran out of creative juices & I ended up posting about things that were trending and far from my style. Which led to me not putting my heart in each post. Which leads to a train wreck for a blog. I received more positive feed back & more views back when I was posting what I loved...because you loved it to. I want to get back to the beginning and love everything I share on my little slice of the Internet. 

2. Finish Site Redesign: Redesigning this whole site by myself has been trial and error. I have in my head this vision of how I want TheKoenigs to look. I feel confident that it will eventually be complete and up to my satisfaction if I continue to work on it. At some point I'm sure I will have to enlist the help of my tech savvy husband. Until then I'll continue to learn on my own and tweak what I can. I hope to add a few thing on here and make it very unique also a bit more sophisticated and easy to read.

3. Organization: I've officially purchased my first planner. It's time to get organized this year and become more proficient in keeping me on track. I've always been bad keeping on track with everything. Take this post for example I should of put it out at the beginning of the month instead it's toward the end. Yeah that has to stop!

4. Dare to be different: Yeah that might sound kinda cheesy but I have a few things in the works. I want TheKoenigs to be different from others and follow our own path. I've been brain storming ideas and ready to take the next step..which might entail breaking down and asking the techy husband to.

5. Try new things: This could possibly be a part two of dare to be different. I want to go outside my comfort zone this year. Try some new tools, projects, ideas that I wouldn't normally try, because I would be to scared to fail. Take some classes to better my photographs. Anything that could really help me better this hobby of mine. 

New Dinning Room Chairs

That was quick! Last week I talked about some new pieces of furniture I got recently for our home. Well here's one of those pieces or should I say four of them. Woot Woot!



I Flippin’ love them!





Deciding on any piece of furniture is a long, and exhausting struggle for me. For those of you who it takes months to pick out a piece of furniture know exactly what I mean. It was love at first sight when I saw (These Chairs) on Target.com, I'm still trying to make Jason love them as much as me. I was actually hoping to get them in black, not Tarnished Metal. However, I found that "Tarnished Metal" went really well with the pop of chicken wire on our china cabinet







Without anything to help envision what it would look like. I built up the courage and purchased four of these chairs. All the reviews were a mixture of the chairs seeming a bit short, others exclaimed they worked perfect. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.



Unfortunately, all four chairs didn't arrived in perfect condition. Two were missing  screws to attached the back to the seat. Thankfully the awesome people at Acebayou quickly fixed my problem and sent me replacements for the missing ones. The process of putting them together is simple. They're super sturdy, extremely well made, and look pretty bad to the bone with my table. It took my dining room from super girly to a bit more rugged... Don’t you think? (Yes, I know that my shelves & left wall are screaming for a little something extra, im even thinking about playing around with the lighting!)



I’m hoping to find two really interesting upholstered head chairs - maybe even some wingbacks. Who knows?



What do you think of my new chairs? What pieces of furniture do you have that was love at first sight?




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New Coffee Table

 I got a new coffee table for my living room. This makes me happy on so many levels: I wasn't loving the non existent one. So I needed something to fill that void, and I wanted something I could continuously change the style through the year. Because I constantly redecorate EVERYTHING in this house.


My latest favorite place to shop is Target. It’s my go to store  plus it has a Starbucks. You can find amazing Discounts, on their awesome app Cartwheel. I'm talking discounts, on food, home decor, Office supplies, electronics. Whats even great about it is that you can also see what deals your friends and family signed up for aswell. Its pretty neat when you really look at it, once you sign up they give you a one of a kind barcode that holds all the discounts you selected. Just let your cashier scan and rack up the savings.


At the risk of becoming way to nerdy & over excited about cartwheel. I'll start with the decor. I've gotten on the fad train with displaying books. I cant help myself I love the idea of displaying classics. It make my box of stored books take up less space and makes us look intellectual. I actually just got alot of my classics from local Goodwill's. To top the books off I just added a succulent even though its looking quite dead lately.


With that said, I kept the same theme on the opposite side and stored all my Better Home and Garden's Magazines! I didn't want to put too much on this table because I loving the thought of bare minimal and just showing how cool the table is alone. I did center it with another plant in a green bowl. It's been growing like crazy with just minimal care. I topped the table off with a little brass crab I got at a hole in the wall thrift store.
I cant wait to change the decor up through out the year. The only thing I can guarantee stays is the adorable center plant. I've killed ever other plant in this house but this guy. Way to have my back little one.


For right now its very functional. We have a spot to put our drinks, because you can only rest your drinks on the floor for so long before a dog knocks it over. Although there are things on my coffee table, there is still room to perform all of these functions. The books and magazines can be stacked to create even more usable space. For color, I worked with alot of greens, since our living rooms color pallet is Greys, Greens, and Browns with splashes of bronze.


Because the coffee table is rectangular I added contrasting shapes. 




That’s it!


I hope you enjoyed my new coffee table as much as I am.





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Crushing on Chairish



As you all know i'm a huge thrift store/consignment shop junkie. So imagine my surprise when I was introduce to a website that fills my love for that...and I don't even have to leave my house or change out of my pj's.

 I'm talking TONS of pre-loved decor for us design lovers to buy..and sell. Let me introduce you to Chairish.



Logo

The name alone is absolutely adorable. Then you continue on to the website and are blown away with the amazing furniture they have listed. The site is simple to navigate, users can shop by category (lighting, seating, tables, etc.), Topic, or by Markdowns. 


Each week Chairish marks down 25% or more on items that have been in the store over 30 days. That's insane since alot of the high-end items listed are already at a great price.  

Buyers also have to option to "Buy Me Now" or "Make an Offer" on items. Shipping costs to you are calculated. 

Because i'm still decorating our first home and focusing on our office at the moment. I decided to window shop and show how I would create a space and share a few of my other favorite pieces.



Specifics:

Original Oil on Canvas - Moose Lamp


-----That Moose oil painting is just Awesome Sauce and I love it more than White Chocolate Macadamia Nut cookies and Coffee! Hey a girl has her wants.-----
A few other favorites were!


Dana Gibson Bargello Pagoda Lantern




Kreiss Gatsby Lounge Chairs 



Danish Teak Lounge Chair Arne Vodder France & Son

 

 I spent an hour shopping though their accent chairs and i'm still trying to convience Jason why we should get rid of his beat up recliner and replace it with this funky in pink. There's other styles to choose from incase the one's I show didnt fit your fancy over (Here).




You have to keep your eye on Chairish. They've been featured in plublications such as InStyle, Domaine, Elle Decor, House Beautiful, The Oprah Magazine, and Glo just to name drop a few. You can read more about their press over at the blog Here. Besides being an awsome site and listing all these amazing pieces they've just launched a user friendly Iphone app. (See Here)

I want to give a special thanks to Chairish for inviting me to team up with them and create this beautiful space.



  
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