Home Interior Design Ideas: Make it work!

I’m totally channeling Tim Gunn on that one! :) I told you awhile ago how I was obsessing over wanting to move furniture around in our house. I also mentioned how that just doesn’t happen often in our house because of the open layout. Poor me, I know.

But one day a couple weeks ago I was standing in our loft/playroom and found myself staring at a corner that drove me nuts:

It’s that area over by the window – the bookshelf has always bothered me there. It just felt too cramped – especially when every. single. book. is taken off the shelves. I either wanted another shelf for the other side of the window to balance it out or wanted to move it out of that spot completely. I couldn’t get a second bookcase because it’s actually a hutch that goes on top of a desk – and I got it on my one and only glorious trip to the local Ballard Designs outlet years ago. We went with an empty mini van and couldn’t see out the back window on the way home. ;)

Enter the moving of furniture. I slid the sucker over by our stair way and it turned out to be an absolute perfect fit!:

I was worried it might get in the way, but we don’t even notice it. The other thing I have wanted to do forever? Add some kind of base to the hutch to make it look like actual furniture. I mean, it looked like it belonged on a desk, not on the floor:

So I thought up a solution I think turned out pretty well. I measured the size of the top of the hutch, then went and had a piece of wood cut to the same measurement. I also grabbed six “bun” feet to raise it off the floor a bit:

I measured the same distance in all around and drilled starter holes for the feet:

The bun feet didn’t really twist in super tight, but they work fine. I also got a piece of trim molding to dress up the base of my new “bookcase” and cut it with my miter box to fit around the front and the two sides:

A coat of my trusty Black Suede paint from Home Depot and it was done. I absolutely love how it turned out!:

It’s just that little something it needed! I removed the meeeellion stuffed animals and now it’s such a lovely, warm spot when we go up and down the stairs:

See that little dinosaur terrarium on the top shelf? Adorable. Cost me a buck. I got that idea from Lindsay. (Can’t find the link, sorry!) My son loves it!

I didn’t attach the base -- just set the bookshelf on top! The accessories can be seen as you come up the stairs, so because I’m just a little bit crazy, they had to be items that look good from both directions – which is harder than you’d think, especially when you’re shopping your house!:

I ended up securing it to the wall (into a stud) because it’s way less sturdy compared to before, which is odd now that it has a wider base: