Painting our bookcases WHITE

We built our home in 1998-1999, when the "popular" color of stain was this honey oak color. Now....not so popular. Or remotely our taste. Like, I hate it. (sorry if I offend anyone who still has this and likes it)

 ALL our woodwork in this home was that same color of stain. The trim, the kitchen and bathroom cabinets, and these built-ins in our front room.

For the last couple years, we have been working on transforming this home of ours into the style we now call our own. And the woodwork and old stain of yesteryear has been slowly leaving....room by room. 

The new hardwood flooring, the white wainscoting and white trim, and some furniture additions...this room was getting there. But those bookcases. Not my style, but trying to work within a budget, I decided that some paint would work wonders. 

We purchased Bulls Eye 1.2.3. Primer...this stuff is MAGICAL! And then we went with Pittsburgh Ultra Interior semi-gloss White paint. (which happens to also to have primer in it, we didn't want to paint a thousand coats!) 

And now, I am much more happy with the look in this room. 

Here are the shelves while I was trying to style them. You can see that the walls needed some touch-ups.  

Adding white into our home, definitely helps in brightening things up around here. This front room serves a multitude of purposes. This is our LIBRARY, HOME OFFICE, READING ROOM, and MUSIC ROOM. 

Our house is, for the most part, designed with neutral (nature-y) colors. This summer I have had a little fun adding some color to this particular room. I am working on a summer tour of our home for a later post, if the sun ever comes back out so I can take decent pictures! 

So stay tuned for what this whole room looks like for the summer. But for now, here is the side-by-side (before and after) of the shelves...

Love them! Now, if only our kitchen cupboards were just magically painted by some wizard...now THAT will be a much bigger project!! Hopefully some day!