DIY Restoration Hardware French Mute Books

Ever have one of those moments when you think, “My mom would totally laugh at me for this”? Yesterday, I had one of those.

When I was little I would sketch my first day of school outfits, redecorate my room on a random Saturday, eat the food around my plate one thing at a time and NONE of it could touch because…ew. (I’m confessing way too much here.)

Ya know…the quirks. The ones that your mom would just shake her head at and chuckle.

Welcome to my world of quirks a.k.a. borderline OCD. And this is exhibit A:

We’ve officially broken ground on our office makeover and one of the things that drove me batty about the home office was our bookcases always looked cluttered.

We had books from thrift stores, yard sales, my teaching days, Robert’s college days, our hundreds of browsing trips through Books-a-Million. And all of those books from all of those places ended up looking like this:

We had several book stacks hanging out on the floor too, but you get the picture.

This room is already looking a thousand times better, which I’ll be showing more of very soon.

But one big improvement was painting our books. Yep. Painting.

A year or two ago, I saw these pretty Restoration Hardware French mute book bundles and had the idea to DIY my own.

They were $125 for five totally blank ones. Ummm….. no.

But it was the easiest afternoon project to streamline our office shelves and make our own books look extra fancy schmancy.

Supplies used:

• Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Old White
• Annie Sloan Clear Soft Wax
• A few brown paper lunch bags
• Scissors
• Mod Podge in Matte
• Ultra fine tip black permanent marker
• 2 craft brushes
• Clean, dry lint-free rag
• And a stack of your own books of course

I spread out all of our books on our kitchen table and opened them face down. I only needed to paint on one coat of chalk paint on the covers, but you can do two if you think it’s necessary. Make sure to paint all of the edges and creases of the covers too.

When the paint was dry, I rubbed on a coat of the clear wax to seal them. If you wanted to make yours a little more antique looking, you could follow the clear wax with some dark wax, but it’s completely up to you.

Since we had paperback books too, I ripped the covers off so just the pages were showing.

Using the brown paper bags, I cut them up into rectangular pieces to use as the labels, wrote on the book titles with the permanent marker, and pasted them to the book spines with a little Mod Podge.

My handwriting isn’t perfect, but I think that’s what makes them look authentic to the real French Revolutionary style mute books or “couverture muette”.

Oh, and I found this concrete finial statue at the thrift store the other day that fits right in.

I’ll have to eventually rearrange all of our books into genres, but for now, they at least look like decor on our shelves. William Shakespeare and Nicholas Sparks will just have to be buddies for now.

There’s lots more happening in here that I’ll be sharing with you guys tomorrow.

So what do you think? Have I totally lost my marbles painting our books? Is there a librarian out there somewhere cringing? (Sorry, Mom.) Or are you ready to paint yours too?

As long as I can still read them, my bookworm self is happy. Got any amazing must-reads on your book list? Maybe if I start stocking up the summer reads now, warmer weather will arrive. Maybe? Maybe?! Here’s hoping.

UPDATE! If you want to check out the rest of the projects in our office, you can find all the links below:

• Office Before Shots and Makeover Mood Board
• DIY RH Inspired French Mute Books
• DIY Vintage Pull-Down Map
• Industrial Shelving
• Faux Zinc Safe Makeover
• Easy Office Sign

You can see all of the other thrifty before and afters from my Trash to Treasure Transformation friends on their blogs too:

Clockwise from top left:  Confessions of a Serial DIYer | Artsy Chicks Rule | Girl in the Garage | Prodigal Pieces

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