In July of this year, I was surfing Pinterest with the idea of making another found glass table. I came across a bookshelf built using recalled wood, which led me to think about building shelves from boards we had cut from our fallen maple tree. Brilliant idea I thought. A screenshot to hubby later, Steven countered with:
A desk and wall unit
I loved it! He loved it! We built it!
We have some gorgeous maple boards that were cut when the second of our silver maple trees was toppled by a storm two years ago. Steven wanted to only use boards that could be cut down to a width of 12 inches; I argued that we should let the shelves be as skinny/wide/rough as we wanted. We compromised to use boards that were at least ten inches wide and only removed the rough bits that could snag on clothes or yarn.
Steven drew up a schematic of the desk and shelving unit which would fit into the space we had in our living room. He then visited a local hardware store and had steel pipe cut to the needed measurements. We spent five hours one Saturday and he spent another four or five hours in that following week using mineral spirits to clean the gunk off the pipes and fittings.
I decided to paint the wall that the desk would be attached to. I liked the way that the darker wall of the inspiration photo both contrasted and complimented the wood and pipes of the desk. I purchased two small pints of paint (one a moody blue and one a moody green) at a local hardware store when I purchased the clear varnish for the maple boards. We decided clear varnish would enable the colors and beauty of the boards to be highlighted.
Once the paint swatches were up and we lived with the colors for a week, he chose the moody green shade for how nice it looked at night. I applied two coats to only the southeastern wall of the living room over the course of a weekend while helping Steven sand, varnish, re-sand and varnish our lovely maple shelves. After the second coat of paint had dried and while the second coat of varnish was drying, we began the assembling of the desk and shelving unit.
I choose this particular picture because of how good our hardwood floor looks in the picture 🙂
The above picture was taken before we began (sparsely) filling the shelves with books and favorite objects. We have had to adjust the location of the end tables, loveseat, and potted plants once they returned to the living room. And we love how well the project turned out!!