If you saw my Home Tour, you know that one of my favorite parts of our current house is all its built-in nooks and crannies. One particular favorite is our built-in bookshelf in the living room. It is on a curved corner and very much in plain sight.

With the majority of my time being spent on the house’s layout at large, I didn’t have time to really focus on the little details (like this bookcase). I knew I wanted to add some extra pizzaz to it and came up with the idea to wallpaper it! Lately I am obsessed with wallpaper-especially the peel-and-stick variety.

Since our house is more mid-century modern with lots of gold accents, I knew I wanted a gold and white wallpaper-something with a smaller print that would show up well behind books and still have the clean lines that mimic the mid-century modern flare the rest of the living room has.

I found the perfect geometric print by NextWall on Amazon and knew it was right. I then bought some shiny gold acrylic paint at Target to paint the corners and edges of the bookcase. I wanted to really frame out the bookcase and make it pop-this metallic paint does just that! I used a small 3” roller with your average school supply paint brushes to carefully paint the trim and edges gold, making sure to tape it all off first for those crisp straight lines.

I waited for the paint to dry and quickly discovered that I would need several coats. It took me about two days of painting and waiting for it to dry between layers, before I was ready to take the tape off. Then, once the tape was removed, I was careful to address any areas that might need touch-ups.

With the gold trim complete I was ready to start applying the wallpaper. My luck with wallpaper in the past has not been stellar so I was a little skeptical, but this peel and stick variety is AMAZING! I just cut it out, peeled the back off and applied it to the wall. I then used a straight edge to cut the ends. If I got off or the pattern appeared crooked, I just pulled it up and re-applied. It was LITERALLY that easy! I will never use any other kind of wallpaper again!

Once all the wallpaper was up I was ready to start adding my books and pictures back to the shelves. I often get asked how to style a bookshelf and for me I think the key is to mix it up. Books don’t always have to go upright. Lay them on their side, use fun bookends and add nick-nacks (that match in color.) Try to keep somewhat of a color scheme going-you will notice I don’t have any red or really bright books-I used mostly books with neutral, pink and blue colors. I also swapped out my silver picture frames for gold ones to better match it’s new surroundings.

Now that the bookshelf is finished it adds so much more character to the living room and makes it feel like a more complete room. As a bonus I even had enough material leftover to use in our hallway telephone nook!

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