And what got painted were... (drumroll)

Bookshelves!

LE and I tagged along with John to Chicago a few weeks back just so I could go to Ikea to buy their $4 wooden spice racks that have popped up around cute kids' rooms across the blogosphere. Like this photo that was posted on Ohdeedoh:

Even before LE was born, I knew I wanted forward-facing bookshelves. Supposedly, they foster more of a desire for reading than traditional bookshelves since kids can actually see the book covers. I can't vouch for the truth in that. What I can say is that I imagine everyone has a space in their home that could make room for a narrow bookshelf (spots behind doors come to mind). 

About 1 1/2 years ago, I started keeping my eye out for forward-facing shelves. Garage sale hunts came up empty, and to my dismay, the shelves that I found in stores were way too expensive for me to rationalize.  

I bookmarked a few different great ideas for DIY: a fabric sling {tutorial}, rain gutter bookshelves {tutorial}, and build my own {tutorial}. These are all ideas that I'd love to do, but they'd end up just sitting in my bookmark list forever and never get done... just like they did for a full year.

After considering different options, the Ikea spice racks for $4/ea were just the right fit for us. I love that they come in unfinished wood so that we could paint them in the darker gray accent color for LE's room.

Here's how ours turned out:

Everyone knows that there's going to be a difference in quality between Ikea and Pottery Barn. I was willing to live with the little imperfections for the cost (I  mean $4 vs $40-60. No brainer.), especially since they're sturdy. 

The pieces of wood just don't line up perfectly, but the one who matters-- LE-- will never care.

I have to tell you, these shelves are the easiest shelves to put together and hang. We've done a lot of floating shelves, including ones from Pottery Barn that are supposedly super simple, but none were this simple.

What I did:

For these shelves, it took a quick coat of regular primer and two coats of paint that I got for free from Benjamin Moore. Since the paint was matte, I sprayed a light coat of polyurethane to give it a slight sheen but not make it shiny. It took about 5 minutes per shelf to assemble using the dinky allen wrench that comes with them. Then, it took about a half an hour to install in the wall using drywall anchors when I wasn't hitting a stud.

I love how the shelves turned out and fill that wall space! LE seems to love pulling books off of them, too.