On Monday, I shared a peak at a corner of pink and green home office on Instagram, and today I’m going to share another sneak peak and ask a question: Is this a fail?
Let’s back up. This space has been such a haven for me as we’ve been stuck at home, so I’m so glad we got it done mostly before the social distancing began.
One thing we didn’t get done before our time at home that actually made for a quick quarantine DIY? These “marble” shelves!

It’s funny—the previous owners must have loved Ikea, because so much of the stuff they had in the house is Ikea. Like these shelves, which actually originated in our laundry room. I didn’t think much of them until Dustin had to take one down to get our LG Styler in, and he goes “huh, these are actually kinda nice shelves.”
I knew that we probably wouldn’t use them again in the laundry room (as I mentioned here, we’re not working on it yet, but I have ideas!), so I kept them in the back of my mind as I planned projects.
You might remember that my initial mood board for this space featured a gold and marble shelf from CB2, but instead of springing for that, I decided to first see if I could get a similar vibe using what I already had.
Boom—the idea for my first ever Ikea hack was born.
The Ikea Hack
It was super simple. First, I took the shelves down and removed the brackets. I took those outside and spray painted them gold using this spray paint, which achieved a really slick look. The gold color is perfect and they actually look like they were meant to be gold!

That part went great.
But then I started sticking my marble contact paper to the shelves to get that marble look and…it wasn’t easy. They were going to have seams no matter what, because the sheets I had weren’t as wide as the shelves.

But then there were some additional seams because of how the paper was going on (not easily) and how it ripped around the edges. And, there are some small bubbles in the final product.
The Result

I decided to hang them up anyway, because I figured most of the issues were only apparent up close, and that seam might even disappear if you take a step back.

I can’t decide if this is a clever Ikea Hack or a total Pinterest Fail, but I do think it would be pretty easy to just rip the marble paper off and have white shelves with gold brackets, which would also look good! I’m going to live with my “marble” shelves for a little while before deciding 100%.
What do you think: Ikea Hack or Pinterest Fail??
PS—Love my office content? See the mood board here, painting update here, and stay tuned for the full reveal coming next week!
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