Bookcases!

On Friday, I told you our bookcases for the living room were finally here, painted, and in the house.  They are now screwed into the wall so little hands can't pull them down and loaded with stuff.  I'm so excited to share!!

Let me step back a minute, though, to early April, when we ordered our first set of bookcases.  We decided to go to the local unfinished furniture store to order something custom so we could get them just how we wanted, and we figured we'd paint them since we wanted them to be white anyway.  We put in our order, and with a 6-8 week delivery promise, hoped we'd at least have them by the time we went to Florida at the end of May.  Well, the Florida trip came and went, and we called.  Well, they've been running behind.  And we called again.  They're on the truck but we can't find them.  We called again.  They're in a town nearby but they just haven't made it here.  We demanded our deposit back.  And thankfully we did, as they are out of business as of a few weeks ago.  Tell me about it.

Once we got that money back, we found a natural wood bookcase manufacturer online and placed our order with a 3-5 week production time and another week or two for delivery.  Here we go again.  We placed that order at the end of July and they were here within a month.  Woo hoo!

So, back on track for finally finishing our living room 4 months later, I primed them that night, painted them the next day and we had them in the day after that.  The hubs worked his magic over the weekend and now the big reveal!

Remember, this was the wall before:

Oh, look at the grass cloth!  And the toys!  And after:

We are so thrilled with how it came out.  It actually didn't take too long to get it just how we wanted it.  Some of the elements:

 Wall art free from feed your soul (thanks, Dana, for the pin!)

Felted bookworm from nodsu

Felted bowls from missyandme

 Mason jar from the dump! (90% of the books, too)

Giraffes from hubs's travels to Africa

We put a bunch of photos on the top shelf, which is lighted with Ikea under-cabinet lighting, and we put a few mementos, like the pewter engraved cups the kids were given when they were born.

We spent a good portion of the weekend unpacking photo frames and knick-knacks for the living room.  Hubs said it was like we were moving in this weekend, as we were pawing through boxes still packed from when we moved in almost three years ago.  We had figured, why unpack when we're just going to have to put it all away when we re-do the room?

What did you do this weekend?