Well maybe I should clarify: Not Billy a person, but “Billy” my set of Ikea bookcases.
I’ve had these bookcases for well over 10 years and some how they’ve managed to survive moving to 3 different domestic addresses, and one address overseas (and who knows what they went through on the ship going across the Atlantic and back), but they are still in one piece! To say that I’m impressed is putting it lightly! I mean they are Ikea after all and we’ve all heard (or said) comments about them being ‘nothing but particle board’. I for one love that box store cause I can fill up any size car with a ton of flat boxes and completely make over a room or two for only a couple of bills! But seriously, I never really expected the bookcases to hold up as well as they have. We were both quite shocked when they made it back to the U.S. in. one. piece. Oh, did I mention that both bookcases have glass doors…as in the original glass doors that I also purchased 10+ years ago and they are still in amazing condition? Like I said, i.m.p.r.e.s.s.e.d?
Bookcases to Built Ins
Lately I’ve been looking around our basement and wondering what I can do to make it more functional and less, well, heavy. I don’t know if the Billy bookcases started my off “black-brown” phase, but pretty much everything I’ve purchased from Ikea is the same color. It makes for easy “coordination” but it also means that things started to feel too “match-matchy” and the color seems to make everything feel so weighed down.
None the less, with our Ikea shrine currently taking up residence in the basement, I’ve been studying the layout to try and figure out some way of making the basement feel more open. We have quite a large finished basement and after we moved in, things just sort of landed wherever we put them. I haven’t had much time nor energy to do much down there other than add in some new Ikea additions! 😉
But back to Billy’s new clothes.
Aside from the color scheme being dark, I realized that what was bugging me was that it all looked like we had just moved in. Nothing is permanent. Nothing looks like it belongs. It reminds me of my first apartment and my hodgepodge decorating skillz – who else threw a scarf over a light and called it “done”? So I turn to the interwebs to get some inspiration and I kept coming back to picture after picture of built ins. While I’m new to this pinterest thing (I know, I know, I’ve just been putting it off) I searched for cabinets, and shelves, and built ins and light bulbs fireworks went off over my head.
“Let’s do built ins!” I declared one day to Dominick. Being the husband that he is, he just looked at me, slightly rolled his eyes, and agreed. [Insert note – Don’t get me wrong, he’s quite wonderful but he seriously has the patience of the a saint! I’m notorious about starting projects and not finishing them for a while months, years, decades. One day I need to share the story of our dining room and how loooooong it took me to paint ONE wall. It involved stenciling. Need I say more?] He’s getting used to me and my “projects” but he is always encouraging me to finish them up! HA! That’s also the reason behind this blog – accountability.
So I started shopping around. Holy moly built ins are expensive! Do you know how many pairs of shoes I could buy with that kind of money?!?! I decided to look at buying assembled or need-to-be-assembled furniture to piece together a similar look. Yowzers that’s pretty pricey too!
I turned back to the interwebs and read blog after blog and looked at picture after picture and soaked up everything that some super talented people have done already. And as it turns out, Ikea’s handy dandy Billy bookcases have been used in numerous Ikea hacks and with quite wonderful results to boot! Like this or this or this (although that last example really is of true built ins). Quite fabulous right?
Who knew that the Billy bookcases that have literally traveled the world and back would be the perfect fit for hacking built ins! They just needed some, well, new clothes.
Blue Prints
Eureka we now have a plan! Now we just needed to figure out all of the steps. This is by far my favorite part of the DIY process. I like piecing everything together and figuring out all of the details and what it will take to get to the end result. This is also the longest part of the process…well the longest until my procrastination gets the better of me…
So this is what we came up with:
- leave the Billys where there at as part of the basement redesign
- put one of these between the bookcases
- loose the glass doors
- loose the glass shelves??? (still debating on this one)
- adding crown moulding, baseboards, and decorative elements
- add lighting (I’m thinking outdoor lights or sconces to try something new…i fear this may be the longest part of this project as I have yet to find something that’s “just right.”)
- add wainscoting instead of priming the backing boards which are the only part of the bookcases that aren’t holding up so well. Besides, the wainscoting will add some architectural detail.
- paint wainscoting??? (We may just stick with white, but if not, we’ve gotta pick a color)
- sand down everything!
- prime the black-brown using Valspar Bonding Primer. Wait, whaaaattt?!?!? Yeah, it’s time to try something new. Sorry black-brown.
- paint cabinets Decorators White by Benjamin Moore in Advance Interior .
Phase I
So this weekend I spent some quality time with the two Billys and some primer. Starting late Saturday afternoon (for some reason that’s when the DIY bug bit me!) each shelf got sanded and then covered with three coats of primer. I knew that covering the black-brown would be a lot, but I was surprised just how many coats they would need! On Sunday the bookcases each got their three coats. I finally located the four other shelves that were still packed away and started on their three coats.
And since that thing called work is now bidding me to head off to bed, I’ll have to pick up where I left off at some point during the week, but basically I’ll need to make sure that all of the surfaces are super smooth and sand down any rough edges or areas. Anything that needs another coat (or two or three) of primer will be touched up and then we move on to adding some BM color.
So this is where I’ll end for now, but here’s a really bad iPhone picture of the current state of our basement. If I had turned the camera to the left or right, you would have gasped in the sheer amount of stuff that I have pulled out of 2 Billy bookcases and one other Ikea bookcase who’s name has slipped my mind. This is what happens when you must pick up mementos everywhere you go…
casalogalbo.com 