Salvaged 2 x 12's Turned to Custom Shelving Unit

We are feverishly putting in all the plants and seedlings for our vegetable garden, so much work in fact that we have gotten a little behind on all of our other responsibilities, however we managed to make a much needed shelving unit for our music room this week all out of salvaged 2 x 12's.  We had no real organization for all of our piano music, most of the time it would just end up scattered on the floor and stepped on etc, definitely not the ideal situation, so we built and distressed our unit using old 2 x 12's to help us store and organize our music.

This custom built to order shelf unit was easy to construct, and the distressed painting technique we used was even easier. 

We started out by cutting our 2 x 12's to the exact size we needed to fit our space, the beauty of making your own unit is you can custom create the height and width you need.

We placed the shelves so that our music would fit perfectly.  After a good sanding we brought it inside to test fit, and then we paint.

I wanted the layered look on the final finished product, so I started out with a mocha brown to deepen the wood color when the distressing was finished.

I wasn't picky about this layer and it's paint coverage knowing it was only going to show through in a few places.

Next up was the red paint.  The color palette that I have in my music room is red, but I didn't want a red piece of furniture just a hint of red to come through in the final design. 

The top coat I chose was white, we have a pretty thick coat of white, but as you can see the red still comes through a little bit.

Now we sand to get all the color layers to come through.  I used a 150 grit sandpaper to really get the layers to show.

My favorite is the knots in the wood, and how they really become much more visible pulling out the red color as well as some of that mocha brown.

Wipe it down with a dry cloth to get any extra dust off, and bring it for decoration.

So with a few decor touches this shelving unit is complete, and our music is organized, now we can finish planting before our summer of fun begins!