Living Room Media Unit

Hi peeps! How's everyone's week going? I am having a great and relatively stress-free week (that basically never happens in my work-life) so I'm totally enjoying it! Plus the weather outside, although still blazing hot, FEELS a little bit like Fall to me. The light is changing and I can just sense the new season. Or maybe just wishing it here??

So I have a little project today to show you that Jeremy and I worked on this past month. Remember this wall in our living room?? When we bought this house the entire living area and hallways were different shades of dirt. I kid you not. Dark tan, taupe, chocolate, dark sage, and khaki. That's totally okay if that's your jam, but it's not mine. I like our spaces to feel more open and airy.

Here's where we started in April of 2015-

And, before we moved in we painted it light gray-

And then around September of last year we were starting to get settled and I felt like it was this HUGE BLANK SPACE. Just drove me nuts. So I hung a vintage quilt my Mom gifted me as a house warming gift on the wall, and called it a day.

It worked for awhile. A year I guess. But honestly the whole granny chic look just isn't my thing. I went through a farmhouse, gimmie all the chippy and rusty things stage when we lived in Birmingham and I'm kinda over it. But I have all of this vintage-y stuff so until I can replace/sell/buy new things I like that are more in my bubble I had to figure something out. A mix so to speak (and isn't life always about this mix? Where you are, where you want to be?? I could preach about that, right? Amen.)

I lived with the above look/feel for basically the past year. Annnnd, about a month ago I decided enough was enough. No more quilt on the wall. Enter an idea. A media unit. Big. Filling that wall. Something that makes an impact and adds function to the space. So I started pinning some things I found on the inter-webs and came up with a plan-

An Ikea hack!!

I sketched out an idea. Two tall BILLY bookcases flanking two short BILLY cases in the middle. I wanted the shorter ones below the TV to have doors to hide all the junk. And, of course. I couldn't leave the back of them plain so I painted it... you guessed it. Navy! My go-to color of choice.

I also bought these library lights to go at the top of the two taller shelves. They are the same brass lights as pictured in the photo above (bottom left bookcase).

And, here's the current progress:

 A TOTAL transformation, right?! Jeremy was a champ and installed it for me (I know he literally cringes when I come up with a new "idea" I need his help with. Sorry babe!). All we need to do is add the crown molding at the top of the two tall bookcases, add brass pulls to the doors (haven't found the perfect ones just yet) and install the brass library lights up top. Easy peasy. I really do love it so.

And, because who doesn't love a good before and after shot. Bam-

A few things I learned along the way-
1. The BILLY bookcases weren't tall enough for my space so we bought two extenders. The top shelf on each of the the tall bookcases are the "extender" part. Basically just another shelf to make it unit taller.
2. If you paint the mdf back before you slide it into the bookcase it will get chipped up/scratched. Nothing a little touching up won't fix, though.
3. These definitely need to be bolted to the wall! They are lightweight!
4. It is possible to cut through the thin mdf back. We did so to plug our TV junk in (Hi, Matt! Thanks for your help!!). You can (barely) see the box sitting on the second shelf (from the bottom) on the left side. I love that its camouflaged now!!!
5. I put the bookcases together myself (with Jonah's help) one evening when Jeremy was on his way home from work. Time consuming and tedious, but not difficult at all. No power tools required for the assembly of the units themselves.

I love that it adds character to our big living space and makes it feel more put together.
What do you guys think?!?