DIY Gold Shelving Unit

Hey guys,

So I was originally planning on doing some more Valentine's Day related posts but then I realized that Valentine's Day is like 4 days away so it would be kind of pointless to do a gift guide because no one would really have the time to buy any of the items I would have picked out anyways. So I will save my gift guides for next year (maybe I'll actually be dating someone by then haha)!

So about a month ago my sister and I stopped by IKEA on our way home from a trip to Tallahassee and we purchased this shelving unit. We only purchased one at the time because they're $80 a piece and we weren't entirely sure how it was going to turn out and we didn't want to waste our money haha.

So I started by laying out all of the piece's and spray painting them. I accidentally spray painted one side and forgot to take a picture and so I flipped them all over to the other sides and took a picture of the white side. Then I spray painted that side and forgot to take a picture of all of the piece's after I had finished spray painting! Yeah, I know, I'm super great at this whole blogging thing haha. However, some of the spray paint got on some of the sides of them so you can kind of see what it looks like spray painted before being put together.

This is the spray paint that I used. I originally used this spray paint on a different piece of furniture but I didn't like the way it turned out so I googled and a lot of people suggested this one instead and I have to agree. It looks so much better and I look the way it turned out.

Then I put it together, which I did by myself which is why there is only one picture of the final product all together. There wasn't anyone home to take pictures of me putting it together and it comes with instructions so I didn't really see the point in taking pictures of it after I put together different piece's haha.

Also, I marble contact papered the top and bottom shelves incase you didn't notice and this is the contact paper that I used.

So after I took this picture, I had to take out the top and bottom shelves because I realized that there were some spots that I missed with the spray paint and so I went back over the whole thing with another coat. Then I brought it inside from our extremely messy garage and yes we know, it's a work in progress! After I bought it inside, I put the top and bottom shelves back in, added the glass shelves and being styling it.

So it's located next to our giant picture window in the family room. It's like two inches too big in my opinion but it will definitely work and I'm not turning back now so it's staying and we'll just deal with the currents being kind of in the way haha.

However before I started styling it, I went around our house looking for everything that I wanted to use to style the shelves (which I actually did this wayyy before I even brought it inside, like two hours before because I was still waiting for the paint to dry. I really wanted to make sure the paint was dry before I risked brining it inside haha). I don't really want to buy anymore for the shelf because in my opinion we currently already own way too much for our good haha so I wanted to use stuff that we already had. Some of our stuff is still in boxes or scattered throughout different rooms so I went searching for everything that I thought would look good on the shelves. 

Since I think it turned out really well, I really want to get another one soon and so I will need to find more items around the house to add to the other shelves. Like I said we have a lot of stuff so I don't think it will be too hard to do. Plus I might end up replicating some things on each one to make it look more symmetrical. 

My plan for the bottom shelves since they are empty is to get large (probably white) boxes to store our DVDs in. I don't really like the DVDs to be on display and since this our main room with a tv in it we need to have our DVDs somewhere nearby and we have a large collection of DVDs that seems to just keep growing every Black Friday haha.

Then I styled each shelf, shelf by shelf. 

I am obsessed with vases and bouquets of flowers and I sadly haven't found all of vases yet but I came across this one in our office which is normally in our office and I thought it would go perfectly on with some pink flowers and on this shelf. 

I also have a large collection of coffee table books and also fashion books so I thought they would look much better on these shelves rather than on the shelves of the steampunk themed library so I went searching for my books and I kind of grouped them together based on their color. And for the group on the second to last shelf, you will notice that one of the them is a light blue and that's because it's my Kate Spade coffee table book. I currently have two out of three books that she has. My plan is to buy the third one and I will just add it to this stack and that way this stack will be organized by author haha! By the way, no I did not pay the full amount for my Kate Spade coffee table books. I actually found both of mine at either TJ Maxx or Homegoods on clearance for super cheap. I think one of them may have only been like $8.

One of the other stacks has my two Lauren Conrad books and so whenever I get her newest one Celebrate I will add it to her stack and probably remove some of the other books and move them over to the other shelving unit. There are several other coffee table or celebrity books that I want to buy so eventually I think I will have enough to make the shelves look a more full but at the same time not too cluttered.

My sister and I recently purchased these pineapple bookends at Hobby Lobby but I thought they would go better with the theme in family room since our library room is going to be steampunk themed. Plus we have a pineapple catch-all tray on our front entry way table so it just ties it all together.

I originally had all of the books in between the bookends but I thought it looked better with the two books underneath the bookends since the bookends have acrylic bottoms. 

The two candles are both the same candle just one is light pink and one is hot pink so I thought they would go well together plus I love having the different shades of pink. Once we finally pick out a navy blue couch and get some pink chairs in here I think everything will go together very nicely. I currently have an Eiffel Tower figurine/statue thing that is like a teal color and so I think I'm going to either spray paint it black or navy blue and replace the box at the top with the Eiffel Tower so that way the Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower are right next to each other. Or I might put the Eiffel Tower on the other shelving unit whenever we get that and then try and find maybe another similar box that coordinates with the one we already have.

My plan for the one shelf with the picture frame is find either more picture frames or different picture frames. I do think that it is kind of wasted space at the moment to just have one picture frame. And yes the picture frame is currently empty. I just found the picture frame around the house and added it to the shelf. I thought that the pink tied in very well with the rest of the pinks.

Here is the finished product minus the bottom shelf which will hopefully be finished soon. To be honest, this project took way longer than expected (about 2 weekends worth of work because I kept running out of spray paint and time to go back to the store to buy more) but I am so glad that it is finally finished. I absolutely love the way it turned out and I can't wait to make another one. In total I think I used about 6 or 8 cans of spray paint and then to cover the two shelves with marble contact paper, it didn't even require a full roll. I finished off one roll that I already had from another project and then just cut off another piece from a different roll that I had already opened for that same project but there is still left on that roll.

P.S. All of these images were taken with my iPhone so sorry for the poor quality.

XO, Steph

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