LIVING ROOM REFRESH & DIY BUILT-IN SHELVES

 

Our living room is where we spend most of our time as a family. A huge deciding factor in us building the house that we did was the open-concept layout that our builder had to offer for a townhome. Our main floor has our living room, dining room, kitchen, and a nook for Bentley's changing table, plus the stairways that lead both downstairs and upstairs. We work from the couch, Bentley hangs out with us and watches TV and plays with his toys, and it's where me and Bents have our snacks throughout the day. Our day both starts and ends with snuggles on the couch, so our living room is a special space in our home, and I wanted it to be pretty, comfy, and cozy.

Looking back, I so wish that our house wasn't attached to others, but a townhome has been a huge blessing to us budget-wise, and it's been the perfect starter home. It's also been the house we've been able to practice our DIY skills on, so that when we get to our single-family house with the white picket fence (for my future horses!) then we'll be pros at all-things DIY and home reno.

The living room has been an ongoing project for us that started while I was pregnant, in the heart of a global pandemic. I'm pretty sure everyone during 2020 was a little stir crazy and started way too many DIY projects...I know I did! I say this because we started this project TWO years ago, and we are now just finally finishing this project. Literally, a few weeks ago, my parents came up to visit for the weekend, and my Dad helped Chris mount our new Frame TV--the finishing touch to this space.

I would still love a new coffee table, and I may or may not be adding one to my cart simultaneously as I write this post, but always remember, just because it looks one way on social media, doesn't mean that's the reality or that it happened as quickly as it seems. In every photo I'm sharing today, there are toys freaking everywhere just out of frame. I styled our living room for this photoshoot, and then in a matter of minutes, Bentley had toys scattered throughout the floor. We're a real family in a modest-sized home, living our best life.

First things first, let's take a look at what this space looked like two years ago.

It's not terrible, but it could be better.

Townhomes lack storage, and we needed a place to put our office supplies, mainly because my office has now been turned into Bentley's room, so we came up with a plan for built-in shelving and storage in the living room. We also use these cabinets for video game storage, board games, books, and anything else we need to store, but need quick access to!

We bought and built Billy Bookcases from IKEA in May of 2020, and we secured them to the wall. This was phase one of a multi-phase project. Next up was adding vertical boards that acted as a spacer to allow us to hide any cords behind the shiplap we were about to install! We have a mini cord hole cut in the top of one of the short bookcases, and no one has ever noticed. We have our Google Nest Router sitting in front of it. The reason we weren't able to cut through the wall and have them come out at the bottom outlet, is as it's a sharing wall, we'd rather not have electrical wires on the other side of the drywall too close to the firewall.

Since there will always be a TV in front of the shiplap, shh, we didn't shiplap the whole thing. We used a nail gun to secure the shiplap boards to the vertical boards and added a trim piece to the top. A few months later, Chris and my Dad added crown molding the day before my baby shower. haha!

Ever since Bentley was born in December of 2020, we put the living room decor on hold and really focused on other areas of the house. I'm not really sure why other than the fact that I like DIY projects and I took on way too many...but it's how I spent my maternity leave in between baby snuggles. It was almost my postpartum therapy if you will. Over the last year and a half, I redid our Guest Bathroom, Tiled a feature wall in our Kitchen, Redid our Main Bath, and Built our Patio.

Okay, I've made you wait long enough... here are our gorgeous DIY built-in shelves and our living room!

A few things in our living room to shout out. I love, love, our Frame TV. I love that it looks like art, and it's motion activated, so if it senses motion, it'll turn on, and it'll turn off automatically once it realizes no one is in the room. We bought a frame bezel in the color Modern Teak to complete the look. A lot of our shelf decor is recent from Target, so I'll link everything still in stock at the bottom of the post for y'all!

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We love our built-ins, and we hope this gives you a little living room inspiration for yours, too