One Room Challenge Week 5: I will survive

I’m turning my large, unused entry into a library for the One Room Challenge!  Check out Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and Week 4!

Welp, after my self-indulgent whine-fest last week, things are looking up for week 5 of the One Room Challenge!  Or maybe that’s just the high that comes from finally getting a main project crossed off a list.

BOOKCASES

After coming to terms with the fact that our limited carpentry skills, plus a reluctance to cut down some of the house’s original trim work, meant that we weren’t going to be able to build a raised hutch on top of the pre-fab bookcases that I ordered, we re-grouped and changed plans a little bit.  I figured that if we could just make the bookcases look like one unit, it would give them enough presence to stand up to the 12 foot high ceilings in the space.

Another issue we’ve been working around is a huge floor vent that we can’t cover up.  It prevents us from having a continuous wall of bookcases in that space.  But no worries!  I’ve actually wanted to move our office workspace there as well, so it was a perfect opportunity to make that happen.  Here’s what we came up with:

So you can see that to connect the units together, we cut a piece of lumber to size to fit and connected it to the two units at the top, then just added some 1X4’s to the front.

The desk isn’t quite done yet (well, it all needs painting obviously), but it was very easy- we just added some wood trim to the wall and the brackets to the front for the desk to “sit” on.  I haven’t attached it yet because we still need to make some final adjustments to the corbels (you can see it’s not even), but I’m loving how it’s looking so far.

DESIGN

In some more design-y stuff, I brought in one of my favorite thrift store finds ever- this antique lamp:

OMG, it was made for this room!

The lighting for this room has arrived, although I haven’t installed it yet- but it’s going to be SO GOOD:

 

This room is really starting to come together.  I got an email last night that the hanging chair from Pier 1 is ready to be picked up, so we’ll install that this weekend.  Then, the major components will be in place!

Thanks for following along!  Don’t forget to check out all of the other participants in the One Room Challenge- you can find the featured designers here and the guest participants here.  So much to love!

PS- Here’s some links (affiliate) to some of the products in the room if you are interested 🙂

Swing arm wall lamps

Warm brass Drop Ring Wall Sconce

Carson Bookcase

The World Market couch and the Pier 1 hanging chair are (sadly) sold out, but here are some alternates for the chair: