Working on My Forever: TLC time for an unused shelf!

Okay, so I have a story about a little shelf to share with you. This shelf has been around for a long time; it was passed down to me from my mom and it has spent time with me in my apartment in college and of course we attempted to find a place for it to fit in when we moved into our first home.

This shelf just hasn't found its home yet; I tried putting it on a very big, open, and then white wall in the kitchen and it just didn't work out. I tried to put it in the office before we got our set up in there the way it is now, and finally it made its way stuffed in the garage doing absolutely nothing. It makes me think of Toy Story3 when all of Andy's old toys are stuck up on the dusty shelf...sad day.

Here is the shelf in the kitchen when we first moved into the house and before we started redecorating......

Here is the unused, washed up shelf in the garage where it has been a few months....

I decided to paint it white and put it in my laundry room which is the room that we come in first when we get home through the garage. It is good to have a space to put your keys, wallet, mail, spare change, or really anything. And that is another huge bare wall in my house that needs something on it! I am really glad that I decided to put this in the laundry room because I was THIS close to buying this entry way table from Target

It is super cute and I really love the look, but the $125.00 + shipping and handling price tag just wouldn't cut it. I would rather change something I have and be able to buy some cute accessories to go with it so on to the transformation....

I used this spray paint from Rustoleum (make sure it is the paint and primer in one)! I put 3 coats on my shelf after I dusted and cleaned it really well. I would recommend trying to wait for a day when the humidity isn't too high which is pretty much impossible in Alabama, but I did notice that it was taking a really long time to dry between coats. I also recommend making sure you are doing this whole process on a clean surface to avoid debris from sticking to your paint job.

This is what my shelf looked like after 2 coats of the spray paint. Make sure that your paint dries completely between coats.

So, the wall in my laundry room that was going to be the new home for my shelf is not the prettiest wall. Our laundry room is very spacious, but very BLAH with the original vinyl flooring, paint color, and dryer haha. So anyways, I knew that I wanted to add something to the back of the shelf to hide the ugly, blah wall. So, I decided to go for some foam board and fabric which is my favorite go to solution! I used this technique on my bookshelves in our den; here is the POST

So, I got a large piece of foam board and some awesome fabric that I picked up at Old Time Pottery. All you need to do is measure the surface you are trying to cover and cut your foam board to fit those measurements. Then, lay your fabric out (after making sure you have ironed it really well) and leaving at least an inch or so on each side cut your fabric. Then, you simply wrap it like you would the sides of a box with wrapping paper and hot glue the fabric into place on the back of your foam board.

I decided to use a staple gun to attach my fabric covered foam board to the back of my shelf. Another option would be some heavy duty Velcro that simply sticks to any surface so you don't have to worry about any sewing or anything like that.

This is what my shelf looks like with the fabric background! So happy!!!!

I wanted to set up the table and accessories against the wall in my entry way because this is the same paint color that I am going to use to paint the laundry room. It helps me to see exactly what it will look like against the wall color and motivates me to paint my laundry room faster!!!

And here is the final home for my shelf! It has come a long way and has travelled to many different places in several different homes, but I am super happy with the results!!!