Monday, June 13, 2016

Finding a new style, instead of our current thrift store mishmash look.

Ever since we bought the house 3 years ago we have been talking about covering our long odd wall in the living room/ hallway with floor to ceiling shelves.
Our house, though the best we could have hoped for in our small budget, is decidedly odd.
We have thousands of books and most of them are completely inaccessible and stored in boxes in the garage.  Our living room space is narrow and mostly non functional since it is also the isthmus of the house. All traffic from one side has to pass through there to get to the other half. Kinda like having your living room on an extra wide staircase leading from the down stairs to the upstairs. We figured since we can't actually use this for sitting, we would just line one wall with bookshelves. We have filled it with different almost matching shelves, but our 9 foot ceilings, the odd door in the middle, and the TV really break it up. After looking at different design ideas over the years Jed fell in love with a rustic-industrial look combining pipes and wood. We are going to wrap the shelves over and around the TV, which we will mount on the wall, over the door to the garage, along the wall, over the squared archway that leads into the kitchen side of the house, and down the other shorter wall where we will have a wall length desk for the computer area. With 8 people in the house this 12 foot desk will not be too big at all.
Jed will also build our new bed in the same style. After shopping around and finding nothing he liked enough to actually pay for it, this was really what started the whole project. We really love the bed we have but were gifted a Cal King and we could not find anything in the same style anywhere.

After searching online we found some great images that have worked as inspiration and reference.

The majority of the shelves are going to look like this. The wood sits on top of half inch pipes.
Found at overthebigmoon.com


The shelf over the entryway to the kitchen half of the house won't have room underneath for the pipes, so it will be hung more or less like this.
From Pinterest: Original source unknown

The bed frame is going to be a combination of the next two pictures, only without the wood on the foot board.
Found at thekidsroomdecor.com

Found at bobvila.com, but the watermark reads thatsmyletter.blogspot.com

Because the desk is going to be much longer than the one in this picture it will have a third set of legs in the middle. The cross brace will also be slightly different.
Another Pinterest find
The pipes are getting painted with a spray paint called Rust-Oleum oil rubbed bronze. We used it in the kitchen to make something match our awesome faucet and we really like it. It gives the metal a cast ironish look, but smoother. Basically like the black pipe in the pictures. The wood will be left natural and we will just oil it to really show the grain. The headboard of the bed will get some wood burning done, though we have not quite figured out what we want yet. Jed was originally planning on our family crest but we are going to hang that instead.

Then came shopping. Since we are getting A LOT of pipe, price matters. After looking around for HOURS at the typical places, Home Depot, Lowes, etc. Jed realized that we live in a world of options, went online, and found this glorious place!
Plumbing Fittings Direct - Your Plumbing Supplies Online Store!
Shopping here saved us more than 50% on the pipe and fittings for the design Jed came up with. HUGE difference for our budget!