French Provincial cabinet doors solve a design dilemma

Using cabinet doors from a french provincial china cabinet for doors on our 

bookcases was a thought that struck me just this morning.  

Why had I never bothered to take a measurement and see if this would work? 

 But I am glad it finally did occur to me, as I have long wanted to hide the 

busy looking bookcases with shutters or custom doors.  

(Here is an old photo of the french provincial dining room cabinet.

This before it was painted white and lined with fabric.)

The perfect solution was under my nose all along....

my old china cabinet, now in an upstairs room, with it's four doors and wire 

grates for that extra frenchy look, and a fleur de lis linen sheer to hide the contents.

The living room bookshelves, sans doors.

This is the beauty shot that was just featured in Romantic Country magazine.

Fifi O'Neill styled it to look absolutely wonderful.

What you don't see is the entire bookcase view. Behind the chair are all the 

books that don't color coordinate with the room.  Forever and a day I have been

dreaming about adding hinged shutters to cover three of the shelves and leave the

top three open for pretty displays.  

 The big grey chair was moved into a bedroom, 

and in its place I put my writing desk.

After the desk moved into this spot, the bookcase was more annoying than ever.

If bookcases can be annoying, which I think they can, as many people write blog posts

and articles on how to style and arrange items on bookcases because they are annoying.

They look messy, busy, cluttered...and I had to agree.

This space looks so pretty, I am thrilled with the result, even if

the photo is lackluster.  Moving one thing, leads to moving another,

and that is how adding doors became paramount (in my mind).

I am still moving furniture and tweaking things, and its coming along

nicely.  So if you have a bookcase, or open shelving with in a framework,

consider recycling old cabinet doors and place them over the shelves using the same hinges.

  The hinges worked perfectly, but I had to reverse the direction of them.  

I also hinged the two doors together, so they don't open in the middle, 

the fold out to the sides, which is really nice.  So there you have it~

a rainy day project that has me quite pleased.