Out with the old, In with the new

Matt bought this tv stand for $20 at Menards when he moved to Fort Dodge. It looked ok when paired with our old furniture but now that we’ve got our awesome new stuff, it looks so pitiful. It’s totally dwarfed by the furniture so it looks awkward in the room and we practically have to look down at the tv because the new couch is taller than the old one. We’ve been throwing around the idea of building a mantel with electric fireplace which would also hold our tv because we hadn’t found anything else that we remotely liked. But then we went to Ikea last weekend and everything changed when we spotted this…

Pretty sweet, right. It’s not what we thought we wanted but it’s got the height plus it’s substantial enough to balance out the new furniture. And at $99 it was a complete steal. Since it’s finished on all 4 sides and made to be used horizontally or vertically, there’s lots of uses for it if we decide to do change things up in the future. We really liked the idea of accessorizing the shelves and adding some storage space since there currently isn’t any in the room.  (Just to note - that is not what our wall color actually looks like in person.)  

And look what showed up on our front step on Monday –

Our friends Emily & Rob have a ladder shelf in their family room and after seeing it I knew we had to have one too! They can get pretty pricey so I’ve been scouring the internet and store ads for a few weeks before finding this one on sale on Amazon. I was a little nervous about buying it without seeing it first. I didn't want it too red since our coffee table is black/brown but it looks great!

So now I just need to tackle the daunting task of accessorizing these two awesome shelves. Yep, this is definitely a little overwhelming for me. I tried to go through the rest of our house and find things that could be used for either of these shelves but it seems we don’t really have anything good. Or I’m just not creative enough to figure out how to make it work. I’m searching for baskets this weekend and hopefully during that process I’ll find some other cute, inexpensive items to help complete the room. Wish me luck!