After trying a few different combinations we went with four full-width and one half-width bookcase. We used Billy Bookcases, closely following the example from Centsational Girl’s blog. It was only a little nerve wracking to coordinate on a project where neither of us really knew what we were doing. You don’t pay a cent more than you would otherwise, since that would be tacky! Please see our full disclosure policy here.RevolvingDork and I have completed our first DIY home improvement project together: built in bookcases for our living room. If you make a purchase after clicking on these links, we will earn a small commission, which helps to keep our content free. We promise to never sell your email information. Simply click HERE for more information or to receive your free printable planner. We also offer a FREE Printable Whole House Home Decor Planner to help you organize and simplify your home decorating process. You can see them below with the additional height, which got them much closer to the ceiling. We added them to the top of each shelf which added another 14″ to the height of the shelves and made such a huge difference. If you don’t live near an IKEA, these could be a good online substitute, but check your measurements! This is the shelf we used (four of them) in case you aren’t familiar with them. FYI–You can also get some IKEA items on Amazon to make life easier. I knew I wanted to go as close to the ceiling as I could, and as luck would have it I found out you can purchase Billy Shelf Extenders from IKEA to make the standard bookshelves taller. Once I had that calculated, I just had to figure out the top part of the shelves. That left me with 20 inches of open space to cover over with trim, so I knew we would need five 5″ boards on the ends and in between each shelf. I measured the space in between the walls, in our case it was almost exactly 12 feet, or 144 inches, then I subtracted out the width of the bookcases which are 31″ each, or a total of 124 inches. To figure out how to best use the space, the picture below shows how we did the math. How to Build Built-In Bookcases from IKEA Billy Bookshelves I had two shelves already from my former home office so I picked up two more tall Billy bookshelves from IKEA. What is nice about the space, which is open to our foyer, is that the walls already created the perfect “niche” to put shelves in. Sources are linked throughout and listed at the end of the post. This is the home’s formal living room just inside the front door, we use it more as a quiet reading/library space since formal entertaining isn’t high on our list these days. This picture is from our move-in day before we had the room painted pale gray. He basically showed up one day with the lumber and did the entire project for me himself I sure am one lucky girl! At one point last year, I showed my Dad a picture of some shelves that were similar and asked if he could help me with the harder parts of construction. Since I didn’t actually do most of the hands-on work, I suppose it is easy for me to say how simple this is, but this project is certainly simple compared to building a wall of shelves from scratch.Ī quick recap if you missed the first post: I’d been dreaming about building these shelves since we moved in our new home.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |