Built-In Shelves

Ever since we moved into our new home this past November, I have been painting EVERYTHING white. Well, everything meaning all the trim. What can I say, I just love those crisp clean white lines. It really just makes the wall color pop.

Over the past six months, I have tackled about three quarters of the house’s trim. It was just plain, ugly brown wood. You’ll see in the upcoming pictures. It has been a grueling process. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into, but once you start you really can’t stop! My basic method for painting trim goes like this:

• Wipe down and clean the wood with some furniture polish and a wet rag.
• Fill in any holes or damaged wood with wood filler. If I was fixing trim that was already painted how I wanted, I would color match the type of filler with the color of the trim. In this case, it doesn’t really matter what color the filler is because I’m just painting over it anyway.
• Sand down the trim thoroughly. I just used 120 grit paper and it worked fine.
• Once again, wipe the wood down with a wet rag to clean off all the sanded particles.
• Start painting! I used Behr paint & primer in one. Most of the trim that I painted only needed two coats but some areas needed three.

If you’ve never painted trim before, don’t get scared off by the list. It is a long process but it’s so worth it! Each room looks so different than it did before I painted the trim.

Anyway, we have one archway that I have not yet painted white and it connects to some built in shelves we have. So, one evening I decided to get the ball rolling and just go for it.

This is what the shelves looked like before.

 If you’re looking for a good brush to use when painting trim or something like this, I would highly recommend this brush which I purchased at Home Depot! The short handle and angled brush almost make it easy enough to not need painter’s tape.

 So after cleaning and sanding down the shelves, I got to work painting. Like my rubber band tip? Put a rubber band around your paint can for an easy way to tap off excess paint from your brush.

After the first coat, the shelves were looking pretty rough.

After two coats, they looked MUCH better.

At this point, I was about two hours in and decided to call it a night. Do I think the shelves could use a third coat? Absolutely. But for right now, they look pretty good and I can live without a third coat for a few weeks. So I started organizing the shelves with some of my décor and a few favorite books as soon as they were dry.

After everything fit in nicely, I really started to like the outcome.

Although, I am prone to changing the way things are set up on pretty much a weekly basis. So I’m sure in a few days the shelves will be completely rearranged with some new items too. Oh, and please take note that the rest of the archway that the shelves are connected to are on the project list. Along with those ugly sea foam green walls with the terrible border. Yeah, that’s been there along with some terrible wallpaper in the kitchen for the past 6 months. It’s proved impossible to remove. But that’s another story!

Ta-da! Pretty white shelves in about two hours. One more project checked off the list…