Naked no more

Hey, get your mind out of the gutter.  What did you think I was talking about anyway?  I'm certainly not running around naked.  Dominic, on the other hand, well...  Just kidding, he's dressed (for the moment). 

Anyway, I am talking about the bookshelf we use to store Dominic's toys in the living room.  I picked this guy up at a garage sale for $15 last summer.  It's not a quality piece of furniture and has its fair share of scratches, but in my opinion, that is exactly what makes it perfect to store toys for a rambunctious boy.  I decided that it needed a bit of a make-over to better fit in our newly redone living room (I promise I'll post on that make-over soon.  We just have to finish up a few things before I show it to you.).

Here is what it looked like before... naked.  I wish I had taken a better before picture.  You know, when it was crammed full of toys ;)

As you can see, I pulled out most of the toys.  What you can't see is that I didn't move them very far.  Just out of sight, the toys surrounded me as I worked.  I'm not sure why I didn't move the shelf to a more open area.  I guess it just seemed like too much work for this easy project.

I had ordered some pretty contact paper online.  Here it is:

It looks kinda tan here but in real life it is gray and white (hint, hint about the living room changes!).  

Then I rolled it out inside the shelf to see how much I would need.  I cut it about a 1/2 inch longer than I needed so that it would uniformly cover the bottom.  You can see the overlap at the bottom.

 Repeat until the back and sides are covered.  Cut notches for any protruding (not a good word when talking about being naked, huh?!) areas.

  Remember how I mentioned to cut a little long at the bottom?  Well, here is where it comes into play.  Once you have everything covered, use an Exact-o knife or a pair of scissors to score an even line where the back meets the bottom (again, not so good when you're talking about naked people.  Naked shelves = okay :)).  Then pull off the excess for a clean line.  No more naked shelf.

Here are a few afters:

This project took about a half hour.  Not too bad, right?  I like the way it turned out.  What do you think?  I thought about lining the shelves too but decided against it.  I like some of  the wood showing through.  I may have something else up my sleeve involving paint for this piece in the future, but I'm not sure.  Any ideas?

Oh, and by the way... do you see the ugly tile surrounding the fireplace in the picture above?  The tile that has driven me crazy since we moved in three years ago?  It recently got a little face lift of its own.  The fix is probably temporary but its a huge improvement.  I'll be sharing those changes soon.

Happy Monday!