Book Shelf in the Master Bedroom above the Headboard

We’ve been working on our master bedroom for weeks now and finally have wound down to what might have been the one project I was looking forward to the most. A book shelf above our headboard! Long before the rest of my ideas for this space came together I was hoping to add a shelf here all the way back in 2019. But, like with everything, other projects needed to come first.

Just to recap what we’ve done up here so far:

We painted out the whole room and did some rearranging.
We added a bedroom door and hung a mirror on it.
We added a second closet rod for Lodi.
We installed a brand new light fixture.
We reupholstered our tufted head board.
We also added brand new window treatments!
And we added power strips and a new coat of paint to our end tables.

We have a closet along one whole side of our second floor master suite which is awesomely like 100 square feet of storage space. Our new guest bedroom design moved most of my books into that space over two years ago.

It really needs to be cleaned out but it seemed silly to tackle it until I at least got my books out of there.

The corbels I’ve also used under the shelves in the living room and under the shelves above our kitchen sink.

Clearly I really like them lol

I will also be replacing the galvanized pipe hardware that I’m using in the master bathroom with these as well so the two spaces speak a bit more to each other.

The biggest issue I had was not wanting to “trap” our headboard…

So, I flipped them over!

Its a bit unconventional but I decided to just pretend I planned it like that so those corbels will double as book ends!

Lodi picked me up a ten foot 1×8 of white oak and OMG isn’t it gorgeous?! He had it cut just for me! I requested saw marks and it be true to size… It is absolutely perfect!

I sanded it over completely, stained it in Dark Walnut (by Minwax) to match the floors and put a coat of polyacrylic over it.

Once I got it installed and started adding to it I realized one thing immediately – I’m actually GLAD that I couldn’t put the corbels under the shelf like I was “supposed” to!

With the adding of the books and décor it almost hid the supports completely making the shelf look like its floating!

I actually rarely read or buy “real” books anymore… (My kindle is the electronic love of my life.) HOWEVER I have “real” copies of all of my absolute favorites and books I cannot part with from my childhood.

One realization I had when purging was that I wasn’t just keeping my favorite books (which had been my intention) I was also keeping books I wasn’t even that fond of because they were by my favorite authors…

Once I realized that I had an easier time purging a lot more.

(Tip: Donate your books to your library – its a tax write off and they’ll be in good hands.)

It seriously bothered me that they were all boxed up and in storage for so long.

Getting them out and choosing the ones to keep here, on our new book shelf, was like reconnecting with best friends I hadn’t seen in ages.

For more decorations I went searching throughout the house for pieces Lodi brought with him when he moved in and pieces from me as well.

All three of the plants that were in our master bathroom have now come here meaning: oh gosh darn it! I’ll have to buy more plants for the bathroom 🙂

I was a bit concerned that the book shelf would look “heavy” above our headboard but I think it actually took away from the fancy I hated about the new headboard fabric and gave the whole wall some much needed balance.

This space felt totally unfinished before.

With this completed our bedroom finally feels like we moved in and made it our own!