Crafty Carrs: Living Room Redo

So I have shown pictures of the shelf in my living room several times. It has been a place to collect random household items, a place to hold trophies and trinkets, a Christmas display case and so much more. This shelf was actually left here by hubby's old room mate. As I was cleaning up his room when he moved out I saw it and thought, hmmm that is an unusual shelf. Kinda cute. A year later I had the hubs hang it in a blank space on the wall and there she sat. For years. The sad thing is, this is directly in front of the front door. It could be so great! I can see the potential, however everyone coming into the house just sees, well... they see our junk!

Then one day my oldest daughter came home from Young Women's (that is like youth group for young ladies at our church) with this little beauty.

This is called "The Family a Proclamation to the World" and it can be viewed in more detail here. This is just putting into words what family is all about and it is what I strive for as a mother, daughter and sister. When my daughter brought this home it was like a light bulb went off inside my mind. I decided to make a family tree out of my little shelf!

I had to leave the house this morning to house sit for my parents for a week, so I only have half of the pictures but will add the rest when I get home and get it up on the wall.

The first step was to take everything off of it and take it off of the wall.

Once I got it outside I gave it a light sanding. I did not go all the way down to the wood, just hit it with a palm sander enough to "get the shiny off".

After I sanded it I used 3 cans of black spray paint that I found in the garage. I have no idea what the paint was used for, but none of them were new. If I had to guess I would say I used more than 1 but less than 2 whole cans.

I made a template for each area of the shelf with cardboard and took it to the store with me. I purchased 8 plain unfinished wood photo frames, some wooden letters and some hook and eye hardware from hobby lobby. I spent a total of $12. In between coats of the shelf I painted the photo frames black.

I added the eyes to the top of the frames. This is not hard, I used my hands however I do recommend wearing work gloves. My fingers are still a little sore and bruised this morning from doing it last night.

I measured the top of the shelf and made a mark at the halfway point. I measured the bottom of my letters to determine how much space I needed total for my letters. I determined that each of my letters had a 2" bottom and I wanted about 1/2" in between them. I needed a total of 10". I put a little dab of glue on the bottom of each letter to hold them in place and then ran a screw from the bottom of the top shelf into each letter.

Once I was done I screwed the hooks into the shelf to hold the picture frames.

My shelf has a space for 8 photos and the proclamation plaque my daughter made. I picked pictures that I had on my computer, and printed them at home on regular paper in black and white. I will most likely later send them to Walgreens and have them printed on photo paper, but for now I wanted to spend as little money as possible. I chose to use a single picture of each of the kids, a picture of my parents, a picture of my sister and her husband, a picture of his parents, a picture of one set of my grandparents and a picture of one set of his grandparents. These were the pictures I had on hand, however I think later if I can get a picture of the other set of grandparents on each side I am going to change the pictures of the kids to a set of boys and a set of girls to make way for the two extra pictures.

The finished product is so great, I just love it! I am so glad that this is the first project I decided to tackle on the living room. Hope you have enjoyed this. I would love to hear if you try this yourself and to see pictures!