Built-in Bookshelves
So before we begin, let's look at how gawd-awful the room looked to begin with. Crystal chandelier, wall-mirror, beige carpet and yellow walls (insert barf emoji here... wait I found it: 🤮). It took a lot of imagination to see past that to the classic feel of an English library we envisioned.
First step was to have the wall mirrors removed. I then had to remove the mastix and patch and texture the drywall behind it. I also took out the carpet in preparation for wood floors. So before it looked awesome, it looked like a construction zone... well, no, actually it was literally a construction zone.
That's a lot of work, but pretty straight forward. What was actually really hard was deciding what kind of paint to use since a color has a very different effect on a room when all the walls are covered in it than it does when it's a swatch. Here you can see the paint swatches on the wall.
We had the wood floor put in. Shopped for a couch-bed, spending a lot of time agonizing over the fabric, and arriving at a green-brown plush velvet fabric that I will call "twig colored" (inside joke for Julia). Now it was time for the bookshelves! We got inspired on Pinterest with "built-in bookshelves" that frame a space on the sides and above, and decided to make some ourselves by modifying some Ikea "Billy" bookshelves.
The idea was to frame the couch with the two big shelves, and then mount the thin shelf horizontally over the couch, making a sort of canopy. A big concern here was safety. You don't want a bookshelf to come crashing down on your head. So I mounted two-by-fours into the wall studs. Rock solid. I then bolted several heavy-duty L-braces onto these, which we then attached to the hanging bookshelf, as you can see below on the right.
I also had to re-size the shelves (cutting them on a table saw) and attach them non-Ikea-style with wood screws in order to get the proportions just the way we wanted. You can see the result below.
Next we wanted to add in some classic library-style reading lights. So I got some lamps with bendable arms, and after a little bit of re-wiring and drilling things I was able to seamlessly integrate them into the shelves. The lamps can swing 180 degrees so you can align them as desired when reading on the couch.
Okay, time for the big reveal! Our gorgeous built-in bookshelves for our cozy library nook. If you dare, hover your mouse over the pic below to see the original room before we transformed it.
AAAAAHHH!!
