Styling a Bookcase

HIYA!!!!

Yeah, it's me.

Back for another beautiful, bodacious, bemusing, bull $%&ing post!!!!!

I am still helping my friend Connie with her home in south Florida.

We are now adding the layers to make it cozy and unique.

One of the sticking points that bedevil many a homeowner and aspiring designer is how to attractively arrange a bookcase.

Connie inherited a big built in one in her living room that we had to work around.

Let's take a stroll down memory lane to appreciate where we are now, today, this very
minute in time, as you are reading this here blog post that I am writing this very minute!!!!!

 This is the bookcase we got handed to us against MY our will.

We changed some of the fussier details, simplifying it to work with Connie's style and painting it a simple creamy white, getting rid of the glazing finish that had been previously applied.

If you want to read more on how we did this, you can read about it HERE

Then we had to figure what to put in it.

This is the point we had gotten to when I turned my attention elsewhere in the house.

I felt the back of the bookcase should be painted blue.

Connie finally caved, and I got what I wanted!!!!!

At this point she started placing various and sundry objects from around the house on the shelves.

She wondered why it didn't look so hot.

WELL!!!!!

I informed her.....

that's because i hadn't put on my thinking cap and concentrated on this part of the room!!!!!

When I design the clutter that goes on a bookshelf...

books are a must.....

Get it???

BOOKshelf???????

books?????

But, since we were doing a more polished look than I normally do, I wanted to do the covers wrapped in white, just like the big boy decorators do it!!!!!

Last year when Connie and I hit the annual Flea Market/Antique Show, we stumbled across some old muslin that we grabbed for 20 smackers.

When I saw it, I screamed melodiously intoned: "Connie! Come Here! Right Now! 

Now!!!!!,

 NO, NO, NO, put down that rhinestone pin,

 and come over HERE TO ME!!!!!"

boy, when you find the perfect thing that you were looking for, only you didn't know that it was just what you were looking for.....you (ME)get a little paranoid that someone could come along and swoop down and steal it from under 

your very eyes!!!!!

As I said, Connie bought it, and she

 cut it up and wrapped the books!

Don't tell Connie's husband Chris that we stole some books from his office to have enough for our bookshelf arrangement.

I wanted to do arrangements on the shelving that were all whites and creams.

I got her started on a collection of creamy white Abingdon Pottery.

But that wasn't enough to do the trick.

What to do?????

What to do?????

I KNOW!!!!!!!!!

CORAL!!!!!!!

That's creamy.

That's pretty.

That has interesting shapes.

I wonder why I hadn't thought of that before?

If anyone has an idea why such an obvious choice hadn't occurred to me, leave it in the comment section below.....(be kind)

I had Connie meet me at the local sea shell store that is between her house and mine.

I had the idea that pieces of coral would just do the trick for accents on the shelves.

We already had some pretty sea shells from Connie's ocean house, so we only needed to add one more.

The trick for displaying sea shells, is to have the proper stands to get them to stand up.

I had never had a stand before, and was quite impressed, let me tell you.

Just goes to show, an old dog can still lean some new tricks!!!!!

I created a somewhat symmetrical balance between the two sets of shelves. 

If you've been following this story, you may remember that the center part of this bookcase is the hidden doorway to the master suite.

Chris gave me a thumbs up on the decorating efforts.

That's as much time as he spent on the project.

I feel this side is done.

This side may need one more thing on the bottom shelf.

Connie doesn't agree.

On that note, 

Latah, Gatah

(I'm back up in Massachusetts)