How To Upcycle A Bookcase To An Enviable Standard!

by katsonga.com

What a lucky find!

I was walking down the street about a mile away from my house   when I saw this solid wood bookcase dumped outside someone's home. I liked it immediately and I saw potential but I was on my own and it was large so I decided to leave it. A minute down the road I thought, no way man, that baby's coming home with me!

I walked back up, knocked on the door and asked if they were throwing it away. The lady said yes so I took the shelves, as that's all I could carry and walked home to ask my hubby to come and help me collect it. Luckily, it fit in the car.

I decided to paint the book case white and the legs Farrow and Ball's Parma Gray.

It took two coats of primer and two coats of white wood paint to get the bookcase as white as I wanted it to be. 

When I was done painting I thought it looked a little boring. It needed some life so I thought I would wallpaper the sides fully but the Cath Kidston wallpaper I wanted was £25 ($40); I wasn't prepared to spend that kind of money on a full roll of wallpaper that was mostly going to be binned.

I started trawling through eBay to find other people's left over wallpaper and stumbled upon an eBayer who had already cut flowers off Cath Kidston wall paper and sold the pieces to people like me that wanted to decorate furnitures. She cuts around the flower in a circle and leaves it to the buyer to cut neatly around each flower and leaf.

So, that's what I did. 

Cutting around the flowers took a fair amount of time, maybe two hours because I wanted it done neatly. Then, using wall paper paste, I stuck the flowers onto the bookcase. If you want similar wall paper pieces just search "wall paper decoupage" on eBay. A pack currently costs £6.60 ($10) including postage.

To be totally honest, I wasn't sure if I would like the outcome but once it was done I loved it. It's probably my favourite piece in the house because it took so much love, creativity and effort.

I share a tonne of savings tips in Build Super Savings:

---