Week 6 of the One Room Challenge hosted by Apartment Therapy, and it finally hit me how much work I still have left to do. This week was a bit of panic mode when I realized my carefully measured shelves didn’t fit exactly how I planned, I had a ton of finishing work to do, and I needed to find time to prime, paint, & decorate.
I’m convinced you can’t be a DIYer unless you’re willing to pivot and completely change the route you had planned on going with mid project. As I shared last week, the wall where I was working on built-ins turned out to be even more warped and unleveled than I had originally thought, so my built-ins would no longer fit symmetrically. In my original plans, the shelves had 4 columns, with the outside shelves being the same width and the inside shelves each being the same width so that the unit was symmetrical. When I realized my last column was going to be much more narrow, I thought of two possible fixes:
- Cut the 3 shelf unit apart, take out some plywood in the middle, and find a way to re-glue it back together.
- Accept that the right column would be a smaller shelf and find a way for it to look purposeful.
I seriously considered option 1…for a second. There are many problems with that option though. The unit was very heavy, it would be extremely messy, and probably impact the structural integrity of the shelves that I worked so hard to make sturdy. Plus with the walls being crooked, who knows if I would’ve been able to cut enough out for the sides to be perfectly even.
Option 2 at first felt like a gut punch. I had been planning this build for weeks down to 10ths of inches, and accepting that it was not going to work as I originally planned was hard. It felt a bit like I had failed. I had to come up with a way to make this look intentional and beautiful.
While I decided what this narrow column was going to be, I added its shelves in place and started on the face frame.
The face frame stage is always exciting to me because it’s just like that finishing touch of the building phase that makes a project come to life. I used boards of varying thicknesses in different spots to cover up any gaps with the warped wall, or warped wood. Then I gave the entire unit a coat of primer, enamel cabinet paint, and called it a day.
I was really proud of what I had made and that I kept pushing on, but I still had to deal with that uneven shelf.
I decided since this is a coffee bar after all to make this mug storage with cabinet doors so it looked like it was supposed to be a different size from the other columns. And not just any cabinet doors, but show stopping doors with amazing design.
I used my extra 1×2′ boards from the face frame and routed the edges of each board to make them round. Then I cut them on the miter saw and glued them together to make this slatted design. I painted them the same color as the cabinets and added some fun gold, geometric hardware. I spent 4 days just working on and perfecting these doors, but once I stepped back, I was really proud of them, and they 100% fulfill their purpose to be beautiful and intentional. Sometimes rolling with the big changes ends up being the best part of a project.
I’ve got two weeks left before reveal week of this space, and I’ll be focusing on the bottom part of the coffee bar, dining chairs, and all the little details this space still needs. Until then, make sure you’re checking out the One Room Challenge Blog to see what all the other amazing creators are up to in their spaces.
bonita by rachel 