Family Room Project: Adding Built-In Bookshelves

The space between the stairs and a bathroom in the family room seemed to be a great spot for more shelves.

I have found built-ins to be sometimes  too limiting for me, but this seemed to be a perfect place for floor to ceiling and wall to wall bookshelves.

  Our family room is used as our library and we have had many bookshelves that hold thousands of books.

 The family room is long and rather narrow and the extra bookshelves made the room look smaller, so this seemed a good way to add more storage space and then free up floor space at the same time.

This wall has been rather useless to us even though it looked nice... it had 2 wall lights (the places where the cut-outs are) that were in an awkward spot. We have had a large mirror on this wall or a picture, even a small desk.. and we also tried having bookshelves here, but the lights tended to glare in our eyes, making it hard to see the books. This spot just always ended up being not too useful to us.

Our oldest son agreed to build the shelves for us. What a blessing!

Here he was removing the paneling to access the wiring to change the lighting... I hadn't taken a before picture, so he's holding it for the picture. :)

The wall is open... he had closed off the wiring from the other light fixtures and will put 2 recessed lights in the ceiling above and in front of the area the bookcase will go. 

 There wasn't any secret treasure inside the wall.... we looked.  :)

The wire hanging down had to be taken down to remove the wall... it is wiring for cameras that another son installed outside.

After this picture, they just hooked it up a bit to get it to stay out of the way until the family room project is done.

Son #1 put the new lights in... you can see one of them in this picture. It sure added a LOT more light to the area.

He started the bookshelf with putting the frame up.

He added shelving and we talked of how to make sure it would be sturdy. He is very good at working with wood and it was a delight to see the work he did. We rarely get to see the work he does since he does it on his job.

 It was  treat to have him here at our house more often and to see the wonderful work.

He put supports in the middle of each shelf and then added a slim board along the front of each shelf as a finishing touch. He also arched the top of each side so that it would match the built in shelves that are beside the fireplace in the same room.

The bookshelves are 6 feet wide x 8 feet tall and are wall to wall and floor to ceiling. This picture shows them before they are totally finished... there will be more to come.

This will be my resource library... for books on health and nutrition, herbs, cookbooks, and much more.

These shelves allowed me to get rid of several freestanding bookcases in the room and should help to give the room more space. What a blessing.

The family room project will continue in future posts as we make more changes in paint, ceiling and fireplace. I hope you will return to see what these shelves look like all painted with the new paint colors.

Thank you for visiting.




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