Built-In Bliss!

 

Hey you guys!

 

Okay, so what is the first thing that everyone sees when they walk in your front door? Maybe it is a beautiful foyer, or a pretty sitting room or formal living room? Hopefully its not something crazy like your laundry room or a bedroom....ahh! Well, in our house, the first thing you see when you walk in the door and look straight ahead is our fireplace with built-ins on each side. Once you come into our house we have a little entryway that leads to a sunken den complete with a very large wall that has our fireplace and built-in shelves. When we walked into the house before we bought it I could immediately see the potential that it has. I am pretty obsessed with built-ins. It sounds weird, but to me it feels like they just bring everything together; they add so much character.

 

So, lets take a look at what our built-ins looked like before we closed on the house... 

 

Needless to say, it left much to be desired haha. It is just so DARK and dated! When I first saw it, I knew that I wanted to paint the shelves and remove the unused electric piece. I wasn't sure what color I wanted to paint the shelves so for our first two years I made the dark wall work while I went back and forth in my head.... white shelves? cream shelves? gray shelves?

 

Here is a look at what I like to call "phase one" of our fireplace and built-in redo.....

 

I couldn't make a permanent decision on what I wanted to do with the shelves, but I knew it DESPERATELY needed some life and color. So, of course what is a girl to do? PINTEREST! I saw a lot of beautiful Pinsperation as I like to call it, and I decided that foam board was going to be my best bet. I bought several sheets of foam board from Hobby Lobby, cut each to size with an x-acto knife, then hot glued my fabric on each piece. I really loved the way that it turned out, but I knew that the bright, in-your-face colors needed to go. So, this past Thanksgiving weekend I decided to commit to a permanent solution. Here is a look at the transformation...

 

This is what my shelves looked like after one coat of primer. I used Zinsser primer (which I really like); and I had to do a total of three coats before I felt comfortable to move on with the paint. This is definitely the hardest and most taxing part of the whole process. It really got me excited though to see how bright it could be!

 

So, I decided on Behr's color called "Silky White", but I got it mixed in Glidden paint because it is a little cheaper in a Satin finish. It took me so long to decide on a color because our den is open up to our kitchen, and I wanted to paint our cabinets the same color as these built-ins. That is a lot of pressure people! So, I found THIS on my favorite blog for painting inspiration. This girl is amazing because she has basically painted everything in her house to update and lighten it up. I loved the way her kitchen cabinets ended up looking, so I decided on the same color as her!

 

 

On the trim around the built-ins I used a small craft paintbrush to avoid getting the paint on the brick. I am going to whitewash our brick eventually, but I didn't want to be sloppy for the amount of time we are going to wait for that to happen....

 

 

My plan of attack was to completely paint one side of our built-ins. Mainly because I had a lot of stuff on the shelves and I didn't want to have to find a temporary place for all of that stuff because clutter everywhere while I am working on a project drives me crazy. Here is a look at the half way point of our update...

My goal was to finish painting before I put up Christmas decorations. I finished all of the painting a few days after Thanksgiving and after seeing the end result I am so glad that I decided to paint before Christmas. It really made our decorations so much more beautiful! Here is a look at our Christmas set-up....

 

 

So now that Christmas has come and gone (sad day) I finalized how I want the shelves to look on a day-to day basis. I knew that I wanted a chic, clean look with gold accents. I had a lot of blue accessories already, so it made sense to save some money and go with some of the pieces I already had.
So, here is what our fireplace and built-ins look today....

 

 

I had a lot of the pieces I used for the mantel and shelf décor already from accumulating it over the past two years. I got the majority of the accessories at Marshalls, TJ Maxx, Antique Stores and yard sales, and Target.

 

 

 

 

 

Lets take one last look..........

 



 

Ahhhh. Every time that I look at this wall I get warm and fuzzies. I just love the way that it has turned out. My vision was a clean, chic space that would really brighten up our den. I guess the cute dog is a bonus right?

So what do you guys think? Do you like the big change and my vision? The next step is to take out that terrible electric piece and whitewash the brick. We are slowly marking things off of our to-do list, and I can't wait to see what the final product will look like!