Operation Bookshelf Complete!

As I mentioned previously, we really needed bookshelves to corral all of the crazy books all over our house. We went back and forth over building them ourselves from premade cabinets, building them from a plan from Knock off Wood, buying unfinished ones from the Unfinished Furniture Mart, or going to Ikea. Then once we decided on Ikea it was another whole story to try to figure out which shelves we wanted. Billy is very popular and the cheapest, but didn't really fit our needs. We loved Liatorp, but it was too expensive. We eventually decided on Hemnes, and got 5 units--three without doors and two with glass doors. The measurements fit almost exactly all the way across the wall in the living room.

So off to Ikea we went...


Here is the Element in our driveway, showing the amazing flat packaging skills of the Ikea folks. Yes we fit 5 bookshelves into our car!


Here is refresher of the wall the shelves were destined for. The formal living room in our house has been kind of a repository for hand-me-down furniture, art, books, yard sale organizing, whatever--but it is a beautiful room with crown molding and we wanted to turn it into a library.

So Brett and I unloaded the Element and started a kind of assembly line. I am not in any of these pictures, but it was my job to take the shelves out the box, assemble the frame and legs, pass it onto brett and start over with the next one. It was Brett's job to nail on the back, sit the unit upright, position it on the wall and secure it to a stud.

Here is another in-progress shot from the other angle.

After several hours, we had all 5 units assembled and then it was time to put on the doors. We decided to rotate "no doors" with "doors" across the wall for a balanced and symmetrical look that had some visual interest.

We are eventually going to frost the bottom half of the doors so that we can put no-so-pretty things in them like extra serving platters, and then use the top of those to display items and art so that we won't have to dust them.

Here is the finished product! You can literally see that the light was fading by the time we were done...it was surprisingly exhausting! We are so happy with the finished product because it gives us the storage we need and brings out the white crown molding in the room nicely.

So far we have collected all of those random books from around the house and dumped them in just to get them out of the way, but we haven't organized or arranged anything. It is sooo great to have them all in one place and to be able to get some of those shelves out of the way. Like the one in the dining room where the space could be much better used by a console or wine rack!

Has anyone else gotten wall-to-wall bookshelves?? Or are we the only bibliophiles around who can't seem to let go??