A Freshly Styled Shelf & a Speckled DIY

I gave my living room shelf a refresh with paint, inspired by peel and stick wallpaper.

I’ve officially started fall cleaning and decluttering. I started with the living room. I rearranged the coffee table and side shelf, but I stopped with it came to the book shelf behind the couch. It was messy and unfinished. I felt like it needed an extra pop. I considered adding a peel and stick wallpaper to the back wall.

I went to Target for a little inspiration. I found this speckled dot peel and stick sample. It was perfect. Unfortunately it was out of stock. When I get an idea in my head, I need to it right away. I wanted to do this project that day – so I decided to make my own print with paint.

I used black acrylic paint and a kitchen sponge to achieve this print pattern. If you’re wondering why there is a cut-out on the shelf, it’s for our air conditioning unit. The reason we keep a shelf behind the couch is to hide the unit.

Here is a photo of the AC in use. The shelf discreetly conceals it. If you look really close in this photo, you’ll notice a sleeping Mango under our couch.

When the air conditioning isn’t being used, I cover it with this piece of wood I painted.

This living room shelf update was a quick and easy DIY that pulled this room together. I’ll probably always be making minor tweaks with the decor, but for once the room feels complete. Next up, I’ll be cleaning the kitchen, going through all the cupboards and doing a little painting. 😉 Stay tuned.

Ps. you can shop the living room shelf here on my LIKEtoKNOW.it page. If you want to see the living room shelf in its early days, read Tour a Western Modern Glam Living Room. It gives you a glimpse of the shelf without a backing (it’s from IKEA). We originally were not going to put the backing up. It meant we would have to cut around the AC unit. In the end, we did. The shelf needed more stability.