Grow Me. Grow You.

"New" Book Shelf.

I bought this book shelf at a furniture thrift store for 15 bucks. It had a flimsy back that we took off. I had a great pantless model to show the before pictures...




...and a shirtless one for the during.




I grew up with my mom refurnishing furniture and I love to do it now. I got some advice from the home depot guy for painting a wooden piece:

1. Clean it off.

2. Give it a light sand to rough it up and help the paint stick. He recommended a 200 grade sand paper.

3. My mom suggested getting something that already had the primer in it so I wouldn't have to paint an extra coat. I just picked out the color I wanted and they put primer right in it without changing the color. So I did two coats of the paint and primer in one (semi-gloss). I worked on it during the day outside while the kids played and at night while my husband read our book we'd been reading together.



4. Organize the shelves.



I love these vintage books I found at thrift stores. I also enjoy finding fun activities to do with the kids-one was called Exploring and the other was called, get this- Fooling-how cool is that (it's a bunch of magic tricks for kids). Then, I decorated the the shelves with the model cars and trains Apollo painted from Michaels (I saw some the other day for 50 cents and the kits come with the wooden parts, paint, paint brush, sand paper, and glue).





My mom saw these cars and thought she could make them herself-she did an amazing job! She cut the cars out of wood, painted them, and added wheels.





Here's some more pics. Most of the Dr. Seuss books came from thrift stores or gifts.








My mother-in-law let me borrow some of her books from when she was young and let me have some others-the book shelf is a fun place to show them off. We found Treasure Island in a thrift shop. Apollo looooved it.




Here's the finished product for Apollo's room. We bought a street lamp a few years ago that was plastic and white. We bought a pewter paint kit and Carleton did it over the plastic. Fun for a kid room.