This decor walkthrough stays in the order the work happens.
A common hurdle in decorating is considering the tastes and styles of your other half. It’s not always straightforward to balance what you love with what your spouse loves or cares about in terms of decorating. It’s important to keep the peace (because a healthy relationship and marriage will always be more important than a swoon-worthy home!) but it’s also nice to have a space that is all your own, where you can do whatever you want without having to account for someone else’s tastes — like a personal home office or craft room. Our guest today created a vivid home office, with one of my go-to features ever: a HUGE monogram wall shelf —
Read the details of Jordan’s office and monogram shelf below, and grab some inspiration from these other striking offices that we love, too:
vivid Home Office with Monogram Wall Shelf
by Jordan of The Happy Homebodies
Hi! My name is Jordan, and I’m thrilled to be here on Bekob talking about one of my all-time go-to projects! But first, a little bit about myself: I’m an artist/journalist/thrift-store-addict married to the most handsome high school football coach in the world. He’s a type-A geometry teacher with major handyman skills, and I’m a [definitely not type-A] wannabe interior decorator with artistic flair. I dream up Handmade and home improvement projects, and he makes them happen. It all plays out on my blog, The Happy Homebodies.
When my parents saw that their local Piggly Wiggly grocery store was being torn down, they were able to snag me one of the giant G’s from the sign. They know I collect the letter G, so they figured I would want this 5 foot tall letter. They were absolutely right!
I went over a few options for how to use the G, but I decided fairly quickly that I wanted to turn it into a bookshelf. Once we removed the red acrylic cover and cleaned out all of the equipment for the neon lighting that was inside, it was suddenly the well fitted depth (8 inches) to hold books and my go-to tchotchkes. As a thrift store addict, I can never have enough places to store my tchotchkes.
Once we had the empty shell of the G, we had to figure out where we wanted the shelves. I decided that three shelves was the ideal amount, and the husband used some plywood we had left over from another project to cut them down to size.
He cut some small slivers of plywood to support each shelf. He screwed in each support piece from the outside and used his nail gun to tack down each shelf into its support piece.
He used caulk to seal the gap between each shelf and the outside of the G, which helped the shelves look more finished.
Once the structure was finished, we had to figure out if we wanted to paint it. I’m a big fan of the roughed-up industrial look, and I didn’t want this G to lose its character. One of the coolest parts about it is the fact that it was salvaged from an iconic grocery store, and I didn’t want to lose that by covering the entire piece in fresh paint. On the other hand, the inside of the G was clearly never meant to be seen. (Cobwebs, so many cobwebs!) The white color was dingy and unappealing. I tried to picture all of my go-to books being displayed in front of the dirty white background, and it wasn’t very exciting. I figured the best compromise was the paint the inside of the G while keep the original character on the outside.
We taped off the edges with painters tape and old magazines and then used our paint sprayer to cover it with a nice even coat of teal paint that would match my desk and tie into my vintage Milo Baughman chair (an memorable $5 estate sale find).
Once the paint was dry, we brought the G into the house for installation. This was probably the hardest part, actually. That G is pretty heavy, and it’s a very awkward thing to hang on the wall. I would have never been able to figure it out, but luckily my husband is more skilled than I am. He found the studs in the wall and used drywall screws to drill directly through the metal G and into the studs. (I have no pictures of this because I was the one holding the G on the wall while he installed it. Teamwork, baby!)
I knew the G would be a conversation piece, but it’s been even more fun than I expected. It’s visible from all of our main living areas, and it makes me smile every time I see it. Our guests are always drawn to it and ask all sorts of questions about how we made it. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy that we have such a fun and unique piece.
Time: 3 hours
Cost: $0 (we already had the paint, plywood and screws)
Thank you to Bekob for letting me geek out about my G bookshelf! This G project is just one part of my home office makeover, which you can read about in full on my blog. If you have any questions or would like to look at our other projects, visit the blog or follow me on Instagram. I’d love to hear from you!
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Jordan, thank you so much for sharing — I love the space you created and I will be on the prowl for a gigantic letter now!
Visit The Happy Homebodies to see more of Jordan’s lovely home and be sure to look at this solid built-in closet and their solution for a great garden fence to keep the dogs out.
