A week ago, I posed the question on Instagram: To paint, or not to paint the guest bedroom bookshelves.  Here’s how they looked last Friday:

White with lots of items filling the shelves.  This whole paint or not situation started festering in me about six months ago, but I always talked myself out of it.  Not because I didn’t think the change would look great, but because I didn’t want to take the time to clear off the shelves and take the time to paint everything.  So, I made up a quick Photoshop rendering to convey the idea of painting the shelves.

Many on the Instagram poll said yes, but about one-third said no.  I found this inspiration image, which I think better showed my intention to paint than the above Photoshopped design.

I’ve been on a purging kick, so I had already started to clear out unwanted items from the shelves, so I took painting as an opportunity to start fresh.  On Saturday morning, I went to Sherwin Williams with my color, Olive Grove, selected and bought a gallon of the Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel paint.  I started with the backs, before moving onto the rest of it.

 

The paint is on the thin side, but two coats covered most everything.

I decided to keep the upholstered linen headboard for contrast, but did paint the walls to match.  Just after putting the bed back in place, the sun came out and made it appear much bolder, more Chartreuse on camera:

In actuality, it’s a deeper, muddy, but not too muted olive-green, more accurately shown below:

I love the way the headboard and sconces now stand out against the colored shelves.

Letting fresh paint dry and cure before loading everything back up tends to be the hardest part for me.

In the time I wait to load back up, I’m going through every.single.book and brutally whittling down to only those I truly want to read, have read and would read again or recommend.  My goal is to keep about half, making the shelves appear simpler.