I've been mentioning installing built-in bookshelves in our dining room for several months now. It started as an idea, then for about 5 seconds became something Chad and I considered doing ourselves. Soon after we hired a contractor and the official building/installation process started about a month ago. It only took a few minutes of watching our carpenter work for me to be incredibly thankful that we did not attempt this task ourselves. I like to think I know my limits, and this project would have far exceeded them.
We've talked for years about wanting some sort of built in shelving downstairs. We knew we wanted one place to put all our books that didn't require taking up any space in the bedrooms. As I've mentioned before, our house is small and the bedrooms are tiny--we have to maximize every square inch we can! Since we moved here in 2006, our books have lived in a few random bookshelves that we keep in the extra bedroom upstairs. At some point in the future that room will be home to Baby #2 (no, not in 9 months or sooner) so we wanted to find a place to put them as well as get some extra storage space for other things (like my ever-growing fabric stash). We decided that the back wall of our dining room would be the ideal place and started looking for photos of what we wanted. Here are the ones we really liked and used as inspiration for our own project:
The general idea for all of these is the same: a bunch of shelves outlining the windows with storage in between. We decided we wanted a window seat in the middle with a hinged top that lifts with storage underneath. We also liked the shelving across the top and having adjustable shelves. After much debate (with myself) about paint colors, I decided to just go with white. It'll match the trim, brighten things up and keep the room from getting too busy.
Things are coming along great, and (fingers crossed) the building/install will be complete this Sunday. We had a few scheduling issues and minor setbacks that delayed things by a few weeks, plus our carpenter is doing this as a side job and is only available on Sundays to work on this.
I did leave a little project for myself: painting. After the past couple of months, I really don't want to paint anything else ever, but I already had the paint and materials on hand and my labor is free. So far almost everything is primed and ready to be painted, which is my evening project for the next few days. After Sunday there will be a few things left to prime/paint and then it's just a matter of hauling everything downstairs and putting it on the shelves!
Here's the evolution of the built-ins, and excuse the picture quality...
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| "Before" |
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| I'll admit that seeing the 100 year old wood trim get removed (albeit temporarily) scared me little. |
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| My table is a mess. |
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| All of the shelves hiding in what will be the storage bench--away from curious little fingers! |
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| My table, mostly covered by shelves that need painted. |
I keep thinking I'll have "After" pictures to show and every time I say so it ends up getting delayed another week. So I'm not making any promises, but I should hopefully have the finished room ready to show by the end of next week. That is, if I can motivate myself to pick up a paintbrush...
~Stacy
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