DIY Bookshelf Built-in

Here is our downstairs living room. This is our first house and we have been here for 5 years.  It is a very old split-level house plan, but we got to choose the colors, carpet, added granite and chandeliers in the kitchen and dining area. 

 
 Here is the before picture.  We were newly weds and we also knew that this arrangement never looked good. It is not this house is not our dream house, but I still love it here.  A few years ago and got the idea inspiration from a library magazine that we photo copied.

 

We loved the red and black together. And the huge TV in the middle. Instead of the huge TV,we did a big fireplace with the smaller than this TV on top!

 This fireplace we bought at Sam's Club for about $600 and we love it.  When we bought the house, it was too late to put in a fireplace, so we had to go with the next best thing.

Here is it in our old front room.

Here you see it needed some color behind the fireplace and picture. In a bad way.

We assembled the shelves, and put wall paper on the backs. We also got the lights at IKEA.  At first, they were plugged into the light socket going down to the basement via extension cord that ran along the ceiling of the crawl space underneath this room. But then we had an electrician over for several things and her hooked it up to the light switch in the same room.

Before we got our flat screen, we just used this picture to fill the space. That space behind the picture is just the wall, so we stapled the wall paper to that area. 

 

Here is one of the many random, but meaningful things we have on our shelves.  If you will notice, we bought some glass (also at IKEA) to go under the areas with lights so that it shown down onto two shelves!

And finally we got our flat screen. The decor on these shelves are always changing!

Here you see my photo box frame of my first marathon last year!

Later, we added black crown molding to finish off the room and close the gap between the top of the shelves and the ceiling.


 

 We love it down here.  People are always amazed that these are not custom built ins. So what do you think?

Posted in: fireplace, re-makes, wall paper, wood trim