First Project in Our New Home

This weather just can't make up its mind! 60 degrees over the weekend, snowing today. I now have a two hour delay for work but since they didn't announce it until this morning, I am wide awake at my usual time so I figured I'd take the chance to write about our first project this morning. 

Remember when I said we didn't need to do anything in our new home after we moved in? Well... that doesn't mean that I don't get the itch to do small projects anyway! 

That being said, we built some shelves over the weekend. These may look familiar because they are the exact same shelves that we built in our bathroom at the old house. 

Here's a reminder of the shelves at the old house that were above the toilet:

We have a built-in desk off of the kitchen in the new house. I really want it to function like a desk but was getting the feeling that it was going to function more like a junk collector since it is conveniently off to the side and sort of out of plain view. Seems like a perfect landing place for things that I don't want on the kitchen counter. Solution? Make it pretty! When I make things pretty I have a much greater chance of keeping them clean and neat. Although pretty was my main goal, I still wanted the shelves to be functional.

A few weeks ago, I made some home binders in an attempt to become more organized with our paperwork. I don't know if it's just us, but we hoard paper like crazy. I just always have that feeling like, oh we might need that later, we might need that for our taxes, etc. So a Pinterest post inspired me (of course) to organize it all into binders. There's a binder for pets, cars, general house information, medical information, etc. The point of all that is that the binders were taking up too much space on the desk. So I thought they should be on a shelf. Within reach but not in the way. In a way, the binders lit the fire for creating the shelves. Just another example of one Pinterest project leading to another and another until my life is spiraling out of control with unfinished projects. 

I'm happy to report that we started AND finished the shelves this weekend... no unfinished projects here! 

Here is the before... sorry for the photo quality. These were snapped with my iPhone and the lighting was not great. I never claimed to be a photographer but you'll get the idea. 

The during:

            Bottom shelf back support 

   Top & bottom back and side supports 

Just like the bathroom shelves, I styled the desk shelves with things around the house. Oh yeah, and those binders I talked about. Something had to be functional! And I put our printer back on the desk because we really do plan to use it as a desk and not everything office-y is pretty, sadly. I'm sure I'll change the decor around. I already have some ideas but I'm trying to avoid going shopping... ;) 

Here's a recap:

                           Before

                             After 

ANYONE can make these shelves, they are SO EASY!!!! The part that takes the longest is waiting for your finish to dry! 

I hope everyone has a great week! Stay warm!