Recently my husband and I bought a new bookcase. It was to replace one we inherited when we moved into our last house. We didn't really like it, but we are both hoarders, and we needed storage. Especially for books. We still do. I have a problem when it comes to buying books. So even though we had replaced an old, unloved bookcase with something a lot prettier we didn't feel we could just chuck out the old one. I really must remember to take "before" pictures, but I'm too impatient to get on with a crafty project to stop and take pictures. So instead here is the "after" picture to start with!
Actually I didn't manage to take any of the pictures for this post, they were all taken by my husband. He was pretty keen on this project, in fact the whole thing was his idea. Although up close this isn't the prettiest project in the world, it is functional and from across the room it is very pretty indeed.
Actually I didn't manage to take any of the pictures for this post, they were all taken by my husband. He was pretty keen on this project, in fact the whole thing was his idea. Although up close this isn't the prettiest project in the world, it is functional and from across the room it is very pretty indeed.
I mentioned we were hoarders, but I think this project illustrates it perfectly. Not only did we use an old bookcase we didn't really want, but couldn't throw out, we also found a 2000 UK road map whilst we were de-cluttering. It didn't have any special memory attached to it, we didn't go on a lovely trip around the country in 2000 that we never wanted to forget. We were keeping it, just in case. Just in case the roads magically reverted to how they were 15 years ago overnight and no one else had a map perhaps?!
The bookcase we had inherited when we moved into the house, and was a black ash like this one you can buy from Asda (Walmart). Obviously, we forget to take a proper 'Before' photo, opting instead for 'Midway Thru' and 'After' photos only.
As a family we like maps (obviously we are hoarding them from 15 years ago), so it seemed logical to try and create something from the map and the bookcase. When my husband suggested this I wasn't sure whether he was hoping it would go horribly wrong and that we could throw the whole thing out, or whether he was hoping it would work and would be able to house my ever increasing collection of cookery books.
As a family we like maps (obviously we are hoarding them from 15 years ago), so it seemed logical to try and create something from the map and the bookcase. When my husband suggested this I wasn't sure whether he was hoping it would go horribly wrong and that we could throw the whole thing out, or whether he was hoping it would work and would be able to house my ever increasing collection of cookery books.
We set to work, I did help, but mainly it was my husband deciding which parts of the part should go where. We have London on the top shelf and a pretty coastal area along the bottom.
We used a glue and varnish in one (like modge podge) and just covered the whole thing. We worked in sections, waiting for bits to dry before moving on to the next section.
Finally using the very last of a pot of glue, and the last couple of pages of the map we were done.
And so finally, here's the after photo again. We're really pleased with it. It's a lot brighter than the black ash, and is certainly a unique piece of furniture.
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