Turning Parts Of Our Old House Into Shelves

DIY wood shelves from old exterior of house Montreal lifestyle blog

Why, hello. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Two kids, many projects, trips, gardening season…you get it. Let’s just dive back in.

For those of you who haven’t been following our home renovations, when we built our sunroom extension way back in 2022, we unearthed a beautiful layer wood underneath our pink bricks (don’t ask me, I don’t know why they chose pink bricks) that needed to come out. Keep in mind that our house was originally built in 1944, so as someone who loves old stuff, this was an exciting day. Just look how gorgeous this wood was!

old wood Montreal lifestyle fashion beauty blog

We asked our contractor to save some of the pieces for us to reuse in some capacity and decided to make some open shelving to pay homage to our old house and how they don’t make things how they used to.

planing wood boards DIY wood shelves Montreal lifestyle blog

We did have to prep the wood a bit. They required cutting and planing, a bit of sanding. But other than that, these are more or less the original boards of wood from the wall we removed for our extension! I tried to preserve as much of the bark as I could when I was sanding. To me, that was the best part!

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DIY wood shelves from old exterior of house Montreal lifestyle blog 3

We ended up making two sets of two shelves, one set for the basement bathroom/laundry room, and one set for the little sunroom nook I’m still working on perfecting.

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I don’t think the coolness of this can be understated. There is still bark on some of these planks of wood! From the original tree!!! Like you can just picture the hand sawing that fell the tree that made these boards. I could be romanticizing the process a tad, but you get it.

original bark on wood boards DIY wood shelves from old exterior of house Montreal lifestyle blog
wood grain DIY wood shelves from old exterior of house Montreal lifestyle blog 2

Being able to preserve some of the history of this house, even though we’re updating and modernizing it, is so special! I’m so glad we saw the value in saving some of that wood, even if we didn’t have a plan for it right away.

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DIY wood shelves from old exterior of house Montreal lifestyle blog 5

Sometimes, having an old house is pretty cool.

xoxo

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