Mini Makeover for my bookshelves

While I had 3M poster-hanging tabs in the house, I elected to tackle another project.  When I ordered the boys' Valentines this year I also ordered some fancy gold-marbled handmade paper to line the inside of the living room bookshelves with.  The bookshelves got a bit beat up with our cross-country move, and a part of me still wants to paint them, but since Mr Renn is not on board with that idea, I decided I could at least line their innards and get a bit more contrast.  I used 8 pieces of this paper, and most of a box of 48 poster tabs.

My bookshelves have been pretty neglected since I first styled them after our move here.  They collect a lot of things I need to put out of the reach of little hands.  And they don't get thoroughly dusted as often as they should.  They'd kind of become a literal black hole in the room.  They're so dark.  So I hoped that lightening up the back would help everything pop a bit more.  I wish I could have found wrapping paper or a rolled paper wide enough for this, but as it was I had to deal with piecing the paper into place and camouflaging seams.




They really are decent, hardworking pieces of furniture.  No particle board here.  And I didn't want to damage the wood, which is why I used the 3M strips.  I should be able to remove everything with no residue if I want to go back to the wood.  (Or if we ever decide to paint or re-stain.)  I took everything off the shelves, removed the shelves, and gave it all a thorough cleaning.



Then I pieced the paper in there, cutting as needed in an attempt to minimize waste of paper, but also to minimize the placement of visible seams.



Once the shelves were back in place, I did a little strategic planning.  All of my styling had to accomodate covering up seams in the paper.



And we have plenty of books to cover up whatever needed it.  There's not actually room left to do a great deal of "styling" per se, we definitely have bookshelves for the purpose of housing books, but I think it turned out all right.  The picture doesn't quite capture the difference, but the shelves are visually lightened up quite a bit.  And it was a relatively inexpensive, totally reversible change.