Living Room Transformation - DIY Built-Ins

Here at the Fones' home we are always busy tackling DIY projects.  Since I have an Interior Design degree, and my husband is quite the handyman, we seem to make a good team.  It never seems to matter how outrageous my ideas are, he's always up for the challenge (thank you baby).  

Lately we've been doing a lot of work on our living room, and I couldn't be happier with the progress we've made.  Other than buying new furniture, the biggest change came in the form of DIY built-ins that are to die for!  It was so simple and inexpensive, I can't believe we didn't do it sooner.  And not only did we create loads of extra storage (gotta have somewhere to keep all this baby stuff), but it makes the room seem SO MUCH BIGGER!  

Here's how we tackled the "built-ins"....I'll post final pics of the entire room later this weekend.  Enjoy!

After I measured our wall and came up with a layout, we bought 5 individual bookcases from Target for $20 each - much cheaper than lumber, huh?

Next we attached the bookcases to one another with screws so they became one single unit.  We also added some trim pieces to make the bookcases have a more custom look.

You'll also notice that we simply used the white backs that are standard on these bookcases, but you could cover with wallpaper or fabric, or even paint these if you wanted.  One suggestion if you choose to do this - apply your finish to the ugly brown side of the back so that if you change your mind later, you can flip it back to the white side.

Next we added the top.  We used MDF, and had the nice people at Lowe's cut it into three pieces.  Once this is glued and screwed down, you can apply wood filler to the seams then sand and paint, and no one will ever know that this isn't one huge piece!  We also bought some chair railing / crown molding pieces and attached across the front of the bookcases for a final finishing touch.  Sorry, I don't have any pictures from this step of the process, but you can see it on the finished product.

Here's where we took a little detour from the bookcases, and worked on a part of the project that was  a little more labor intensive.  My husband definitely wanted the TV to hang on the wall above the bookcases, but I did not want cords running down the wall.  So...we made a cut-out in the wall behind the TV and ran the power cord, HDMI cord, etc. down the inside of the wall.  Then, we made another hole at the bottom (behind the bookcases) for the cords to come out and then plug into the electrical outlet.  We also cut out a square access flap in the back of one of the bookcases so we can still get to the cords and the electrical outlet.  This was a lot of work, but totally worth it in the end.

this is just the rough opening we made; this was later covered with
an outlet plate

After all the pieces were together and the wires for the TV were hidden, we picked up this beast of a bookcase and moved it back against the wall.  (We also removed the base board trim from the wall so that the cases could sit flush against the wall).  To finish up, we sanded everything down really well and gave it all a nice fresh coat of glossy white paint.

from this angle, you can see how we pulled the middle 3
bookcases forward to give the built-ins some depth

Construction is done!

I"m still working on the display part of this project...I move books and frames and vases around almost daily trying to get just the right look.  We will eventually put baskets along the bottom shelves for easy access to Mason's toys.

I'll post some more pictures of the entire room once we have everything looking nice!