Happy Election Day! I choose not to get political on my blog at all, but I am proud to say I will be exercising my right to vote today and I hope you will, too. And once I return from the polls, it’ll be time to photograph Emmy’s new room for the One Room Challenge reveal this week. I can’t believe 6 weeks have come and gone already. I am really happy with what we’ve accomplished in this time. Last week I showed you a piece that wasn’t in the original plan, but was perfect for some much needed storage. Today I’m going to talk about it in a little more detail and share a quick midcentury bookcase makeover with you.
When I first acquired this little bookcase, it had glass doors and I envisioned it as a swanky bar cabinet; Sarah and I styled it as such this past Spring at Sweet Clover. However, one day while we were moving it, we lifted from the top which was a little loose, unbeknownst to us, and the doors came tumbling out and shattered on the concrete barn floor. Oops!
I took the piece home and left it in my garage where I anticipated doing something fun with it one day. While I was putting Emmy’s room together realized it might be the perfect little size for the bedroom, and brought it in to test it out. Pardon the cruddy phone photo, but it’s the only “before” I could find!
It was in fact the perfect dimensions, but I ended up moving it to the opposite wall after this photo was taken. I know my daughter though, and I knew that this bookcase would become a but of a catchall and would not stay so neat and easy on the eye. I decided to create new doors.
I measured the width of the sliding door tracks to see what thickness of plywood I would need. I then measured the height and width of the bookcase opening, and added 1/2″ to the height to allow room for the doors to fit in the tracks, which are grooved into the cabinet.
I headed to the store to grab the plywood, but low and behold, I had an epiphany when I arrived. The plan was to get plywood and prime it and paint it a glossy white. However, in with the plywood, was white board, or dry erase board, white and shiny and with a function I knew Emmy would love. I grabbed the whiteboard and took it to the cutting center to have the store cut it for me.
When I arrived home, I popped the doors into the sliding track grooves and was thrilled that they fit! There is a slight angle to one of the doors, and it isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough for us.
Once the doors were added, we knew we would need some sort of handle for Emmy to be able to slide the doors. We looked online and Emmy fell in love with these knobs from Land of Nod. But I also noticed that Hobby Lobby was having one of their sales, so before committing to those, I decided to take a trip to my nearest location.
I found these awesome gold cylindrical mercury glass style knobs and felt they had a similar modern feel and would work well on this bookcase.
Luckily, Emmy approved of my choice. I found the center along the outside edge of each panel and drilled a hole about 2″ in for the new hardware. 
Now all of the cluttered messes can easily be hidden from my eyes behind the new sliding doors.
I will be back tomorrow or Thursday to share the final reveal of this space. I can’t wait to take a look back at where we started and see how far we’ve come!
