Roadside Bookshelf Revamp

The other day (and by the other day I mean probably about a month ago) I was riding to a dance with some friends. They decided the best past time would be reading the Surf Changing Towel post out loud to me.

It was akin to the scene in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where the Vogon is reading his poetry to Ford and Arthur. Vogon poetry is apparently pure torture and Ford throughout the reading is writing in agony. That’s pretty much how I felt.

Remarkably, I survived that and the square dancing lesson that was the destination of our trip.

Anyhow, the day before all that happened, I was driving home from somewhere and passed the most amazing bookshelf on the side of the road. It had a piece of paper with big red letters on it that said, “FREE.” How could I say no to a great deal like that?

The lady who was giving it away was baffled by my enthusiasm about it. I told her something along the lines this’'ll be an amazing bookshelf. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. She looked at me like I might be insane and told me that she’d used it in her mud room for shoes.

To be perfectly honest, it looked like that’s what it had been used for, but I was blinded by the potential I could see in it.

The friends mentioned earlier, were the ones that ended up hauling the shelf into my apartment for me.

One of the biggest problems with this bookshelf were the death spikes sticking out the back. For some reason I didn’t take them out right away.

Oh and that stinkbug in the corner, I named him Sylvester.

When the bookshelf was moved into my house, it got set upside down. This turned out to be very handy because I was able to clean all the dust and cobwebs off more easily.

Then I had to flip the whole thing over, while avoiding getting stabbed by the death spikes, scraping my floor, and dropping the bookshelf.

Once right side up it looked better. Still a bit of a mess, but better.

I then scrubbed and vacuumed all the dust off as best I could. As I learned from the paint job in one of my last apartments, anything you don’t want to clean up, just paint over and it

‘ll be grand. If anything, it just adds more texture to the paint job.

Anyhow, once I’d cleaned it as thoroughly as I could, I laid out my lease agreement under the bookshelf to protect the flooring. I popped the lid off the paint can with the key to my apartment because I didn’t get one of the fancy paint can openers. Then, I used a manila envelope for it’s true purpose as a paint tray.

Initially I was going to paint the entire shelf white, but at this point I decided that doing the back panels a contrasting color would look really cool.

Apparently I waited until now to get rid of the death spikes.

The death spikes were being used to hold a bracket in place that provided no structural integrity. I didn’t have a tool kit at my apartment, so I used the next best thing. A pair of scissors.

Somehow it worked to just use the tip of the blade to do tiny turns and bit by bit remove the screws. the only issue that arose from that was that I forgot about scissors being sharp and cut my finger on the first stubborn screw.

I think I only mildly ruined that pair of scissors, but the death spikes got removed.

With one coat of white paint it turned out looking like this. I’d say still not amazing, but so much better than it used to look.

I didn’t take pictures of it, but I somehow managed to get a fair amount of white paint in my hair. How? I’m really not sure.

I finished just in time to go to a dance and didn’t bother trying to get the paint out just to see how many people would make a comment. Weirdly, no one seemed to notice it, or they just didn’t say anything.

Fast forward a few days because of work and other stuff.

Originally I wanted to used an emerald green or navy blue for the back panels of the book shelf. However, it turns out that chalk paint doesn’t come in those colors. I had nearly given up finding anything that I even came close to a color that I liked, when I found this one. It’s more grey than I wanted, but at least I didn’t outright hate it.

I didn’t have a paint stirrer or anything similar so I used the end of a pen to mix the pain together. It worked pretty well.

At first I optimistically thought that I wouldn’t need to tape around the edges. It took about 5 seconds for me to realize that I wouldn’t be able to control the brush enough not to get blue on the white parts.

So I masking taped it off and painted away.

The true color of the paint is slightly more blue than the grey it looks like in the picture.

Even with just the first layer on it looks so much better than the pink did.

I ended up doing two coats for this part just to make sure that there was absolutely no pink peaking out.

While I was painted I had this candle burning next to me. It’s the best candle I’ve ever found in all 22 years of my life.

Take note here as well, even with masking tape, I still managed to get blue paint on the white shelf.

I removed the masking tape and carefully drug it into my room.

Just like that, the disgusting pink and dust shoe shelf turned into a crisp and classy bookshelf that I actually get compliments on.

I am beyond thrilled with how it turned out. Now I have so much more room for books!

I’ll take new book suggestions if you have any.