Thursday, March 28, 2013

Bookcases Revealed

Our first furniture project has turned out better than than I could have ever dreamed, thanks to my husband. He has done an amazing job. we will definitely be building more things in the future!

Remember (from last post), this is how we started.


 We built the boxes for each bookcase. We leveled them, and then anchored them to the wall.


The next steps were staining them and adding the decorative wood to the top. The boards with the tree cutouts came from out kitchen (which is our next project!) Originally, there was one board with 6 trees cut out. Craig was able to cut the board in two pieces to fit on top of the two bookcases. He painted another board dark green and put it behind the trees so that the green shows through.


Craig cut a piece of the oak plywood for the bottom shelf of each bookcase. The cut end is hidden by the piece of oak on the front, and then he added our pine base trim around the whole bookcase.


We added a shelf on top of the bookcase that runs from the left side of the left bookcase all the way across the doorway and over the right bookcase. We may add a heavier trim piece to the front of the shelf to make it look more substantial.


You can see in the picture above that we added oak trim to the front edge of both sides of the bookcase to finish off the edge nicely. And the picture below shows how the shelf runs over the doorway.

The next step was the shelves. They are also made from the oak plywood.  In the picture below you can see that the shelves have not been stained yet, and the outside edge is not finished.

 The final steps were: stain the shelves and the oak trim for their edges, glue and nail the edge to each shelf, and give every surface several coats of varnish.


Now all that remains is to fill the shelves with our favorite books and other things! Craig put a few things on the shelves just so I could see how it was going to look.


Here's a sneak peek at our next project. This one's much bigger than the bookcases - it's our kitchen!
This is kind of a "before" picture. As you can see, we've already moved the upper cabinet.


I came home from work one night last week to find that Craig had been busy at work changing cabinets so we could get an idea of what we want to do. He cut the counter top so he could move the cabinet that had been the peninsula to the wall. We already love the new feel and easier flow of the kitchen.


The next steps will be deciding on appliances, installing a bigger window, and figuring out an island. The sink will get moved out of the corner to be centered on the new window, a few new cabinets or modifications to existing ones will be needed, as well as new counter tops. It's exciting to see our dreams becoming reality. The kitchen probably won't be done for several months, but I promise to post pictures of our progress.

1 comment:

Carrie said...

I absolutely love it! Can you guys come down and build us some bookshelves? :)