Oleander and Palm: Coral and Kelly Green Home Office - Expedit Bookcase Makeover and the BEFORE pics.

I'm sure you'd like to see the before pictures of The Coral and Kelly Green Home Office. I made sure to take the befores on my iphone so that there would be an even more dramatic transformation in the after pics.

image credit - NY Fotography

But, before the befores, I want to share with you an easy update I made to my client's existing IKEA Expedit bookcase. I'm sure you've owned this shelf at sometime or know someone who has, I had one in dark brown. It's a great piece that offers a tone of great storage and display space. This is the one of the pieces in the room that I decided to keep. It has such great function and really it's design is simple and clean. I don't love the Expedit on the ground as is though. So, I decided it needed some sort of legs to give it a little breathing room underneath and make it look more like a real piece of furniture. I thought about heavy duty casters, which still would be cool, but decided it's boxy shape needed a little feminine touch. Curvy legs to the rescue.

I purchased all the supplies for this project at The Home Depot. It cost me only about $25 to add style to this very plain bookcase. I bought four leg brackets and 4 wooden furniture legs (see image below). There are a few options of leg styles, but I really liked these curvy angular ones.

To pull in the kelly green of the side chair and to draw your eye down to the legs, I decided to spray paint the legs the same color. I started by painting the legs kelly green. I used Rust-oleum Painter's Choice in Gloss, Meadow Green.

Then, using the screws provided in the packaging, attach the leg plate to the four corners of the bookcase. And then, this is the easiest part of all, screw on the legs to the plates - no really, it's that easy! I'm sure you can think of a couple pieces of furniture that could use a set of these legs. I just helped my sister in law add some cute taped gold legs to a little thrifted shelf for my nieces bedroom, it made a huge difference.

And now the befores!!!

The original wall color was a yellowish beige (that's my best description). We painted the walls a nice crisp white. I know white it pretty hot right now, but I think folks are still afraid that white might feel like a hospital or school. But, as you can see, a space can still be warm and inviting with all white walls. It gives you a clean blank space to let colorful accessories play. I still love my all white living room, and it's doesn't feel cold or sterile at all.

As you can see, we repositioned the Expedit shelf on the wall beside the door (opposite the window). I had a lot of fun filling the shelves with my client's favorite pieces (especially her mom's amazing book collection) and some fun pieces I bought, made and thrifted.