Shelving Tears.

The large wall in our "dining room" (I put "dining room" in quotations since our living room, dining room and kitchen are really one big space) has stumped me for months. It is a very big, blank, gray (white, if you ask Jason) wall that I could not figure out. Originally when shopping for our dining room table, I fell in love with a matching buffet and thought all prayers had been answered. It wasn't until the measuring tape came out that we had to come to the realization that there just wasn't the space for another piece of furniture and had to concentrate instead on the wall itself.

Since we do have an open concept house I felt slightly held back in terms of doing some bold, since you can see the wall from everywhere and it had to blend in with the rest of the house which is FAR from bold. After a few months of nothing (ie. staring at a blank wall), I finally decided that I wanted to do a grouping of frames with a variety of prints/pictures. I thought I had found the answer to the wall. I was wrong. Finding frames that I liked, that worked together proved to be extremely difficult. As was looking at Micheal's where the shopping carts are too small for a carseat :(. Now that the frames I finally did decide on are up, something about it just doesn't sit well with me. The scale is wrong, the prints are awesome on their own, but somehow just don't work as a set. I can think of other places in our home where each of these pictures would be much better suited.


So, this left me back at square one...unhappy & uninspired with this fairly major part of our home. It wasn't until I was forwarded this blog that I found the much needed motivation and creativity to start over and rethink what would really work in that space. After a lot of browsing, I found this picture on the blog of their living/dining space & instantly loved the 3 floating shelves mounted behind their table.

To me, this was the perfect compromise between the buffet I had originally wanted, the lack of space for a deep piece of furniture, and the desperate need for something on the wall. I knew that the shelves would be a great display area for art work, dishes and accessories, similar to the two we have in our kitchen as well. So, without further hesitation, 3 floating wall shelves were promptly ordered from IKEA.

I could hardly believe the speed of delivery when the FedEx truck (nervously) pulled down our driveway this morning (side note - I think it's funny watching people drive down our road so hesitantly...I can just hear the thoughts that must be going through their mind. Who has such a long driveway? Why are the ditches on either side so deep? How am I going to get back out of here? There better be a place to turn around or else I'm definitely ending up in that ditch!) I instantly started to figure out at what point TODAY, Jason would be able to hang these shelves for me because clearly, this needed to be done TODAY.

All of this excitement went out the window as quickly as it had began when the package was unwrapped, the shelves were pulled out, and ALL THREE were damaged.

We're not talking a slight scratch. We are talking about major dents, pieces broken off and veneer peeling away. So, now starts what I'm sure will be a fairly painful process of figuring out what my next steps are in terms of returning/acquiring new, non-damaged shelves. Until then, all ideas, decisions and purchases will continue to develop & hopefully once my new shelves arrive, I will have an even better idea of what will live on each one of them.