Readable Radiator Shelves

I've been away from here and away from sharing my crafty pursuits with you for way too long! I'm so happy to have finally finished one of the projects around the house that I've wanted to do pretty much since we moved into our lovely old rowhouse.

As it is a lovely old rowhouse, it comes with those lovely old radiators that never seem to be in quite the right place and take up valuable floor space for stuff like bookshelves which hubby and I are desperately in need of as we are both voracious bibliophiles. So at long last I got to creating a few radiator topper shelves.

I began with a little trip to the local Home Depot's building materials area. I picked up a few 1 x 4s and 1 x 10s and wood screws. Back at home, I dusted off the circular saw and marked all my boards (after measuring each radiator twice - very important!). Out came my trusty Craftsman drill and I got all the pieces together.

After a little sanding, the shelves got a couple coats of a nice cream paint. As I am incapable of doing something basic, I had to add a bit more to the shelves . I found a few fun fonts and printed them out at a size that was a bit larger than the height of the front of the shelf. When choosing fonts I's always drawn to those that have a bit of an antique and handwritten feel which works really well for this project as if you make a boo-boo painting, it just adds to the character of the letters.

I rubbed a little pencil all over the back of the printouts and then transferred the outline of the letters to the front of the shelves. I mixed up some of my DecoArt Americana Acyrlic Paints to coordinate with the colors of the rooms where the shelves would be placed and then got to painting!

Now our books have a place to rest and our little old rowhouse has a little bit of art in unexpected places. I'm really grateful to DecoArt for letting me try out some of their paints for this project!