Mundane Project: The Gothening! Part 1

I've been working to redecorate my office-slash-hangout room-slash-craft space. In our previous apartment, I had a very nice Bohemian Scandinavian Minimalist look going on, but since we've moved, I've lost all the space I had in that room and the furniture has been repurposed to the living room (or given away.)

So I sat and had a think. What would Teenager Me love to see in a room that is completely mine, where I'll be for a while because we have a mortgage?

Goth.

Goth everything.

Now, admittedly, I'm no longer the little edgelord I used to be; I love my retro fashions and Mid-Century Modern designs. My tastes from "Hot Topic Chic" have been refined to something a little more adult.

So, in true tasteful adult style, I decided to Rockabilly this shit up.

Unfortunately, I'm working on a budget. Everything that goes into this room is being bought on deep discount, being repurposed, or is totally DIY, with one exception: the coffin-shaped bookshelf.

The coffin bookshelf is being custom built by Gryphon at Gryphon Furniture; if you live in Atlantia, you know this dude for his awesome Glastonbury chairs.

As for the rest...well, I'm being pretty liberal with black glossy spray paint at the moment. I had some brown shelves I'd purchased from World Market for my first personal space, but now they no longer go with the decor. I spent $4 on some Krylon and went to town:

The same treatment was given to a brown plant pedestal I acquired from Ross a few years ago, with considerably more sanding involved to remove the strange varnish that had been used by the manufacturer:

I think they both look better now, actually. The shelves were a sort of sad, dead-body greyish brown that was popular in 2016, and now they're pretty sleek-looking. The pillar has a beautiful reflective sheen on the top. (Don't worry, that's not the current or future setup for my decor, I just needed a photo of the column.)

Next came lighting; I had a massive paper lamp from Ikea that took up a good deal of space, but gave off only the much-adored-by-Scandinavians diffused lighting. I dropped it off at ReStore and bought a new lamp from Wal-Mart for $15.

It was a black base with a white drum shade. Nothing really exciting there. BUT! I remembered I had stored some pinup zombie fabric for a rainy day dress project; after excavating it, I set about making one hella sexy lampshade:

I cut out the strips of fabric, hot-glued them to the existing shade, and added some purple ribbon for trim on the top and bottom. When I actually do have some money, I'll attach some purple beaded fringe to the bottom. For now, I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

Next pay period, the projects will involve purchasing some art from Redbubble, a $25 striped rug from Ikea, and some pillow covers. I'm also planning to spray paint a light-colored Ikea bookshelf and an end table.

I decided to go classic monster themed, so there will be tons of Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price, and Boris Karloff - with some American Traditional tattoo art-inspired additions later on down the line!