90's Living Room Transformation-ORC Week 4

90's Living Room Transformation

Week 4

In week 4 of our One Week Challenge, we rebuilt the built-ins in our living room.
When we bought our house, the built-ins were at the top of my list for things that I wanted to change. The shelves on the right side of the living room were really thin and flimsy and I wasn't crazy about the arches at the top. The cabinets on the left side were built to house one of those jumbo TVs that everyone had in the 90's, so that alone dated the room. I am all about symmetry, so the lack of symmetry between the left and right side of the built-ins drove me crazy!


Here is what our living room built-ins looked like when we moved in:

There were definitely things I loved about the built-ins (like all of the extra storage), but they just needed a major facelift. Lucky for me, I have a very handy husband. I somehow convinced him to tear out the cabinets and rebuild the built ins.


On the right side, my husband rebuilt the shelves with thicker shelves and we tore out the tile counters and replaced them with wood counters. I painted the cabinets Sherwin Williams Repose Gray to match our walls. I wanted them to blend with our walls.


Here is a before picture of the left side:

And here is the after picture. We ordered cabinet doors, but they haven't gotten in yet, so I guess this is more of a "during" picture.

On the right side of the built-ins, we kept the floor to ceiling cabinets that were on the far right. We ripped out the cabinets that were above the alcove for the TV.
We built a bookshelf and cabinets to match the left side. The right bookshelf is about a foot narrower than the left, but I think they look pretty symmetrical. We also had to fix the crown molding, because the bookshelf was about a foot shallower than the cabinets that were there before.


Here is the before picture of the right side:

Here is a "during" picture before I painted everything:

Here is the after picture. Again, this is more of a "during" picture, because we still need to install the cabinet doors and you can see that I still have a little bit more painting to do.

Here is the after picture of the whole wall. The built-ins are going to look so good with the fireplace once they are finished! I can not wait to start decorating (as you can tell, since I already put a bowl on one of the shelves that had dried)!

Next week we will finish the built-ins and I will show you some of the furniture that I have found for our living room over the past few weeks! Follow along here or follow me on Instagram @libsykora