As soon as we saw the living room in the new construction we were considering, we knew it needed built ins around the fireplace! We moved in and during our first month, we completed the office built ins, and then jumped right into the living room built ins! Shop our most used DIY tools here.
The Living Room Before
DIY Living Room Built Ins With Shelves
Because we had just done the office build out, the boxes for the cabinet bases came together very quickly. We chose to do poplar for the face frames, and to keep it simple and do cabinet bases instead of drawers. This is much easier to do!
Living Room Built Ins Around Fireplace
We tested several paint colors and ultimately landed on Benjamin Moore Simply White. Top Left is Simply White, Top Right is Dove Wing, Bottom Left is Chantilly Lace, and Bottom Right is Alabaster.
I didn’t grab as many photos as I’d have liked of the process, but that’s because my husband was going too quickly with this one. Here is a screenshot of the doors we built prior to being painted. We used poplar and MDF.
Similar to the office, we did shelves again. They were 6′ wide and 15″ deep. That equates to a lot of square footage to decorate when it was completed. We chose to keep the shelves between 15-18″ apart.
It was Christmastime and we had the chaos of a looming deployment to factor in but we got the built ins painted in the Benjamin Moore Simply White and I couldn’t be happier!! The knobs were my favorite part.
So much trial and error with decorating these shelves but in the end I was really happy with how they turned out, very hamptons style or coastal style. I’ll link as much as I can at the end of this post. Later on we actually changed out the fireplace as well, stay tuned for that feature.
Living Room Built Ins Sources:
- Shop our most used DIY tools here
- White Bottom Baskets – Love these, used them in my office built ins as well!
- All Frames From Target
- Much of this was from past Studio McGee Target Threshold line, check their new season of items!
- Disco Ball
- Surf Tribe
If I missed anything you want linked, leave a comment!
