Before and After: Our Living Room Shelving Makeover

For the last few years, we'd been using a rather unattractive old utility shelf (think garage storage) to house our books and part of our vinyl collection.  Our entertainment center had been set up in a gorgeous - but not our style - cherry cabinet that my mom passed on to us.  The main issues we had with these pieces were that they cluttered the space, didn't flow with the rest of our decor, and made it difficult to keep things organized.  We'd been hoping to find some sort of unit at a thrift store or estate sale to rework to suit our needs, but after several months of searching, just couldn't find what we were looking for. 

Last week, we took a little trip to IKEA to daydream and maybe grab a few plants stands.  I'd been drooling over the simple, modern pieces from their Expedit series for a while, but had no intention of making that kind of purchase - until I turned the corner and was greeted by answer to all of my entertainment center/bookshelf woes.

After several hours of putting together the unit (there's a reason why Ikea is so affordable, and it's called "Assembly VERY Required"), I finally got to have some design fun.  And voila:

Because the new shelving unit is black, has very simple, geometric lines, and sits up against a white wall, I wanted to add some color.  I decided to create a rainbow effect along the top shelf with books, and was able to solve our storage issue and bring in a splash of color with the lime green boxes (from IKEA's Kassett series).  To balance out the modernism of the shelf design, I added some pieces from our vintage collections:  vintage cameras, a few very old hardcover books, and, of course, our vinyl.  (Side note: this is less than half of our record collection.  Yes, we may have a slight problem.)  We also moved some of the books from the other shelf to a bookshelf in my studio, which was an added bonus for me!

Our living room space is so much more open, less cluttered, and best of all, it reflects our style.  Have any of your done any living space makeovers recently?

Happy Friday darlings!  Don't forget to come back tomorrow for a new edition of Saturday Morning Daydreams!

UPDATE: The ever-amazing Design*Sponge featured this project as part of their before and after series! Woohoo!