Happy Holidays, friends! While you have some time off this season, here’s a great DIY for you to mull over – straight from my own house.
My husband and I really wanted to add built-in bookcases to an upstairs bedroom, so I started getting estimates. $3,000 here, $4,000 there. Ummmm…no way.
Time to get creative.
After a week of searching, I found these beauties on craigslist for $50 each.
via craigslist
They matched all of my criteria: super tall, solid wood, heavy, narrow in depth, and cabinet-door bottoms. These ended up being about 8″ shy of the ceiling and only 12.5″ deep, which is perfect for books and accessories, but not so deep that they take up too much floor space in the room. Know what I mean?
Here’s an in-progress shot of the (super messy) too-blue room:
source: me
See how tall they are? Critical to the success of the project.
I told my contractor what I wanted to do: “Take these ugly things and make them look like they’ve been on either side of the window forever.”
He added fluted molding, similar to this,
source unknown
on the non-window sides that touched the walls.
Then he bolted the backs to the wall, and added a two piece crown molding cap that is unreal. Looks super high-end, but it was just a couple pieces of inexpensive trim. He even cut out a small section on the inside of the right cabinet to expose that wall outlet you see below the window in the “in-progress” shot above – genius!
Then he sanded, primed, and painted everything in Benjamin Moore’s White Dove (semi-gloss). I really like their Natura line because of the eco-friendly, zero-VOC factor (i.e. your house doesn’t stink for a week after you paint). It’s more expensive than regular paint, but totally worth it, in my opinion.
via polyvore
Lastly, all of the trim and the doors were painted in the same White Dove semi-gloss, and the whole room was painted Benjamin Moore’s Gray Owl, also from the Natura line.
via ChicagoHomeMag
Want to see the finished product?
source: me
The photo quality here is brutal, I know, but I couldn’t be happier with how they turned out! They look just the way I envisioned and were a teeny, tiny fraction of the cost of custom built-ins. But they look exactly the same! Sometimes I stand in the doorway and just stare at them. For a long time.
All that’s left to do is shop for some cool hardware for the handles and fill the shelves.
Do this project and I promise you will be so happy. And if you want my contractor’s info so he can do the same in your house, send me a message here.
Now, where else I can put bookcases in my house?
