Have you heard the expression "work will expand to fit the time allowed"? Well I have that problem, except it's stuff that expands around here. Stuff that fills every nook and cranny and falls out of cupboards to hit you in the face when you're already in that delicate pre-coffee stage of the morning and could really do without it.
We used to live in a two bedroom apartment. It was not big. It seemed spacious when we moved in but then we...moved in, and realised there was pretty much no storage. It was like the anti-tardis.
And while we were a bit cramped as Emilia was growing and the toys were apparently pro-creating while we were asleep, we managed.
The bath in the guest bathroom was full of boxes, but we managed!
So when we moved into our new, four-bedroom house complete with playroom, utility room, attic and shed I was expecting us to be rattling around in practically empty rooms. I thought I'd have to making shopping for ornamental things a priority, I envisioned clearing out the local charity shops, collecting all the lovely decor items I had been eyeing throughout our search for a home in a desperate bid to fill empty space and make the place look lived in....
What actually happened was we moved in, and the day after we unpacked all the kitchen stuff we were back to piles of lidless storage boxes and brightly colored plastic cups exploding out at us every time we opened a door.
Kid plastic - getting it on in your kitchen cupboards at night.
On reflection, our new kitchen doesn't actually have any more cupboard space than our old one did (there goes my dreams of open shelving on top), and now that we actually have enough chairs to have people over for dinner we've bought all the stuff that goes with entertaining, wine glasses, extra plates, side plates....basically just normal kitchen stuff but it's a lot more than the mis-matched mugs and stolen pint glasses that we used to make do with!
So, we needed storage. Specifically storage for the non-everyday items like wine glasses and fancy tea cups that were really only going to be needed every now and again (doing without them was not an option, I'd waited long enough, fancy table-settings would be mine!)
The obvious place was this blank wall in the dining area, and it would have been great to just be able to do a full built in, cupboards on the bottom, shelving up to the ceiling, something like this....
But alas, we were working with a radiator on that wall, so we couldn't just stick a few Billy's in there with doors on the bottom and call it done, we were going to have to try and come up with something that disguised the ugly radiator but still left it functional, while adding storage either side and above, but still looking like a built in....easy!
So we figured the best thing to do was try and cover the radiator, add cupboards either side, and put some open shelving above (you can see the post about those shelves here). The idea was to make it look kinda like a modern version of a dresser, but to keep it open by having space either side of the cupboards and around the shelves to stop it taking over the room. The room isn't huge and anything too bulky would have made it look very cramped I think. So we bought two of these Billy bookcases....
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| Billy bookcase €15 |
And the doors to match.....
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| Oxberg door €20 |
Luckily there was a radiator cover in the utility room when we moved in,and it was a perfect match for the color of the Billy bookcases, so we started with that.
*If you aren't lucky enough to have a radiator cover in the perfect shade lying around they're really inexpensive in any good diy store, you can even just buy the front paneling (you won't need the rest for this project) and save even more that way.
Gavin removed the top and replaced it with a piece of pine board stained to match the shelves. This brought the cover out further than it was originally, bringing it in line with the bookcases.
We (i.e Gavin, I was basically just the idea's-man on this project) then took off the skirting board (a.k.a trim for the American's!) in order to get the whole thing flush against the wall. He also had to cut holes in the sides of the bookcases to make room for the radiator pipes.
*side note~the trim was grouted to the floor. Whoever built this house first installed it too low for the tiles to fit underneath, and then instead of fixing it just went ahead and laid them right up to it. This is the only wall where this happened. Seeing the shoddy work done by builders in this house makes me really confident that at the very least we can't do any worse ourselves!
So we now had two small Billy's with doors attached and a radiator cover all screwed together and attached to the wall. To make it look like one piece we added a top of stained pine to everything. I didn't varnish the tops as I liked it looking a little bit rough and rustic, and we did two coats of walnut stain on all the pieces.
We added the same cup pulls as we used on the Rasts we have in the bedroom but they're just doing the job until the ones I ordered arrive. These obviously will be sprayed gold.
We then added the open shelving above, and those were treated the exact same way as the pine tops below.
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| Can we just take a second to talk about the fact that I bought fruit specifically to stage a photo? I feel like that must be some kind of a blogger right of passage. |
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| Approximately 0.5 seconds after I put the fruit out.... |
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| The cheek! Also, note to self: at some take photo of crazy-haired child with slightly less crazy hair. I do groom her occasionally, honest. |
So there you have it. I'm pretty much in love with them, they somehow make the room look bigger, I guess cos the shelves draw your eye up and make the ceiling look higher? I dunno, I'm no expert, I just know that they look great and they store all the ridiculous things I rarely use but MUST have, like dessert glasses and fancy teacups...
The heart wants what the heart wants.
We do need to move the light on the left now, but that's a small job. We needed to move the table back slightly to center it with the cupboards so now the lighting is slightly off.
So basically what I'm saying is this light is probably going to stay like this for all eternity. Bygones.
How many plants in one room is too many do you think? It's starting to look a bit like an oxygen farm in here.
The whole thing ended up costing €160, including the shelves, materials etc, and it's really cut down the amount of things that fall on me in the mornings, so I'm pretty happy with it!
What do you think? Ever "hacked" anything? Bought fruit for a photo? Been caught in a plastic-cup tsunami? I'd love to hear about it in the comments ;)
Linda xx
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