Bedroom Makeover: Bookcase Fail--with a Happy Ending

I had a frustrating failure in my journey to make over my bedroom. I had grand plans for the bookcases in my room. I wanted to incorporate the pretty beachy blue/turquoise color I had decided on and stencil the backs for a fun pop of color.

Problem: Two of the bookcases are already built.

Problem: I'm really lazy and didn't want to take them apart.

Problem: What if I did take them apart, paint them, put them together, and then hated them...or decided in the future to change them?

So I came upon what I thought was a good idea. I had yards of white butcher paper I had bought for a different project, but ended up not using.

What if I made my own fake wallpaper?

Brilliant, right? Cut the paper to right size and then paint and attach. Bam. Done. Easy.

Yeah, no.

I cut the butch paper in the right size (I actually cut it a little big so that I had room to work with and didn't end up with something too small).

I cut the stencil out--which took FOR-EV-VER! Five pieces of 12x12" chipboard that had to be cut 4 times each to go all the way through. But it worked, was glued together, and looked lovely. Exactly what I wanted.

I thought I wanted the lines of the design to be blue so I realized that in order to do that, I needed to have blue paper. That meant spray painting the paper blue. Okay. No prob. Several hours and two blue feet later, I had pretty blue paper. So far so good.

Then I laid the stencil down and began spray painting the paper white again. (Ridiculous right?!) I began moving the stencil down the first strip of paper and I noticed that the spray paint was leaking underneath the stencil. Well, duh! The stencil wasn't laying perfectly flush and there were gaps. Should have thought that through better. I had been afraid to use a spray adhesive since all I have is permanent adhesive.

I finished the one strip, holding out hope that it would look okay when all was said and done.

Yeah, no. I didn't like it. Too much white. And totally uneven.

So on to strip two. Well now I wanted white strips and the paper was blue. Ugh. Not wanting to waste the $2 paper, I had the brilliant idea to draw the pattern on the paper and paint it in with white paint. By the way, the book cases are over six feet tall.

So I drew the lines in from the stencil. That took much longer than $2 paper is worth, by the way. Then I began painting. Fortunately (?) it didn't take long for me to realize that I didn't like this either.

This was not working out well.

All I wanted was a fun background for my bookcases! Waaaaaaahhhhh!

So I started over again. This time with plain white paper, cut to size and then painstakingly painted in the stencil blue (like a normal person--instead of trying to find an easy way).

This didn't work either. Fail.

Fast foward several months because I was really frustrated...and poor.

I found fabric that was exactly what I was looking for, on sale and with a coupon, to use as the background. Much, much easier--and it looks better too! I LOVE it!

All I did was cut the fabric slightly larger than the background and fold the edges over and use a staple gun to attach it to the back board. Easy, peasy...but for real this time.

Eventually there will be another bookcase to the left of this one, and then around the corner to the right, facing the bed. The rose painting will be moved to be above the short bookcase, next to my TV.

Yay! So all is well that ends well. Right?