Two Big Projects in Jason's Living Room (A Restoration Hardware Industrial Style Bookshelf and a Huge Notre Dame Sign)

We were able to make quite a bit of progress on my brother, Jason's living room while we were up visiting this summer. I think these two projects were my favorite things we've done so far in his house. We spent a good bit of our budget on this house earlier this year on fixing up the kitchen and buying some basic furniture (like chairs in the living room, a rug, a dining room table, dining chairs, etc.) so now that it's time to decorate the goal was pretty much to spend as little as possible. Because we had quite a bit of wall space on either side of the sofa the best solution to take up a good bit of space and not spend very much money was to make things ourselves! 

 

Jason graduated from Notre Dame a couple of years ago and so adding an oversized Fighting Irish sign seemed like a fun idea. We used supplies that we already had so this project was completely free. And we worked on it together without driving each other crazy, which was "great teamwork" as Lillie and Lola like to say. Haha! We had this extra piece of wood from our kitchen island. We had used it as a temporary top to the island for the first year and then finally had the marble installed this spring so we had this extra piece of wood just sitting around.  For people that have asked - yes, we do hope to sell something similar to this in the future as well as some other college logos. We need to figure out the licensing part first though and once we do then we plan on making them for our shop. However, we will have other large wood signs for sale in the coming weeks.

To fill up the wall on the other side of the sofa I built this rustic Restoration Hardware inspired shelving system. I built this myself but poor Jason did quite a bit of cleaning up after me. In fact, I think he might still be cleaning up after me on this one.  As I am writing this I just remembered I never picked up the spray paint and boards from the backyard - whoops! Haha!

 It isn't quite finished yet but it's functional! I roughly used these plans from Ana White's website, but changed the sizing a bit and did the shelves a little bit differently. We bought wheels for the base and I planned on adding them but the coffee table we ended up finding for the room had wheels too so we decided it might be a bit much having two pieces with wheels on them right next to each other in the same room. I think it looks like it's missing something on the base though so I do plan on adding something I just haven't decided what yet. And I still need to add the brackets on the corners. But for now it's close enough to being finished. The tennis racquet and truck were my grandfather's and then we added a bunch of baskets from HomeGoods to help store things like the girl's puzzles and other little things.

You can get a little peek at some of the other items in the room in the photo above and below.

We will have a post with full room shots soon! And a detailed source list.

Source List:

Wall Color - Galveston Gray by BM in a matte finish
Trim - Simply White by BM in a semi-gloss finish
Doors - Wrought Iron by BM in semi-gloss
Bricks - Revere Pewter by BM in matte finish
Sofa - IKEA Ektorp
Pillow with Script - Twin Elm Farm Peterborough, NH
Striped Pillow and Black Pillow - White Home Market Wilton, NH
White Pillows - HomeGoods
Notre Dame Sign - Dear Lillie
Chair in Front of Sign - HomeGoods
Throw on Chair - Ikea
Little Side Table - Target
Vase - HomeGoods
Chairs - Joss and Main
Rug - Pottery Barn
Coffee Table - Joss and Main
Lamps - Target
Drapery Panels - IKEA
Industrial Looking Bookshelf - Dear Lillie
Tennis Racquet - Was our Grandfather's
Truck - Was our Grandfather's
Rest of Items on Shelf - HomeGoods

I hope you all have a lovely weekend! I can't wait to share more images from Jason's house next week.