I apologize ahead of time for how many times I say the words "built-in" in this post :)
The first thing that many people comment on, when they walk into our house, is the built-ins in the dining room. I'm a sucker for built-ins as well. There is definitely something charming about the fact that someone took time to build in a beautiful bookshelf, set of drawers, or even a whole entertainment center. The older the house, the better the built-ins.
Well our house had these cute built-ins that everyone loved. I appreciated the charm, but honestly couldn't stand them. Someone would compliment and I would go into a huge lecture about how impractical they were. They seemed old-ladyish to me and I wanted them gone! So I declared war decided to come up with a solution.
There were two of them. One on each side of the dining room. Plus, there was also a pretty cool built-in that used to house the previous owner's phone (see right corner of picture below). I really loved that they added visual interest to the room, but at approximately two inches deep, there wasn't much that I could put on them. I'm not really a chotchky-type person.
So I decided to do a bit of revitalizing to the built-ins. I wanted to make them more practical for the things that we owned. I knew that the amount of shelves was limiting the height of the object that I could display, so I decided to take down two of the shelves. My idea was that I would then be left with two shelves to put things on. Plus, removing them allowed everything to open up a bit more. I like simple and airy.
A quick coat of primer and we were left with this:
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Significantly better if you ask me. I was starting to warm up to the granny-esk built-ins. Slowly they were becoming more practical for a women of my modern tastes. HA! ;)
The next task was to decide what to display on them. I contemplated this for awhile and then realized that the answer was hanging on the wall in our old apartment.
We were given all sorts of beautiful platters as wedding gifts. I knew that I may only use them a couple times a year, so I decided to use two of them and a pie dish as art in our old dining room. So, when we moved I needed somewhere new to display them. I decided that these built-ins would be perfect!!
I just took the plate holders and used them on the lower shelves, but the upper shelves had grooves cut into them, so I was able to just rest the plate holder in the grooves without hanging them. The end result was this:
and a little side-by-side action:
I think they look so much better! Oh and our little phone cubby got some paint action as well. From phone to flowers. It's looking a-whole-heck-of-a-lot better!
