"New" Office Shelves

We have had these Pottery Barn shelves hanging around our various houses for a good 5 years. I was annoyed by how brown they were at me, but knew I needed to do something to get some of the stuff on my desk, off of my desk. Cue, shelves. I grabbed my Annie Sloan chalk paint and got to work. Since I haven't ever showed y'all HOW you actually chalk paint, I tried with this go-round. You first start with your shelf/wood object, paint and some good Annie Sloan-esk brushes. The smaller one is for the paint and the fat guy is for the wax.

I knew I was going to do one of the shelves in a Pure White and not fancify it further. With chalk paint, there is no "make sure you don't get streaks" nonsense. Just whack it on there in swirly whirly gig style and you'll know when you're good with it.

For the other shelf, I wanted to try out two things: the Duck Blue color and striping a shelf (like with stripes, not with striping wood... we all know how I hate that).

You can totally see the different color variations as the chalk paint dries-- more green, to a more blue. The darker spots in the pictures below are not dry.

I then taped the shelf off with blue painters tape and painted over the duck blue with Pure White-- voila, stripes. (*Hint, leave it overnight before you remove the painters tape. I was doing this project at an UNGODLY hour and by accident left it till the morning. Could not have been a better happy accident decision).

Once I pulled the tape off, I got busy with my clear soft wax. I just swirl my big waxing brush in the wax and go to town making sure all of the paint gets decent coverage. I then used a lint free rag to buff the wax off. That's it. They are sealed and ready to mingle. (so clever)

When it came time to hang them, I let LB take the lead. We busted out our laser level-- loud and annoying but the best thing to use to hang ANYTHING-- and he hit me with this brilliant life hack: take a sticky note and put it under the hole you are drilling. It catches all the dust and wall crap. #MINDBLOWN

This little project and organization idea has cleared up so much desk clutter. From this:

To this... I never really shot this corner because there was nothing happening over there. #bloggerfail

And now a little more organized: I am a happy little camper.