Ikea Hack: Built-in Bookshelves Tutorial

So I guess my blog has not been very heavy on the tutorials, but I do have one DIY project I did (with the help of my husband) that I'd really like to share!  So here goes my attempt at writing a DIY tutorial.

When my husband and I first moved into our new house last year, we were excited by all the space we were going to have.  Going from a 1300 square foot apartment to a 2500 square feet home meant lots and lots more space to enjoy!

However, one thing that sort of confused me was the fact that we were going to have two "living" rooms.  Living room, den, family room, whatever you want to call them, our new house had two.  The back of the house has an open kitchen, a breakfast nook, and a large space for an open living room.  This is sort of the heart of our home, and we chose this living room to be the place where we set up our nice, big comfy u-shaped couches and our entertainment center with the television.

That left us with the question...what do we do with this huge front living room?  When you enter the front door of our house, you are greeted with a large open dining room and living room (a column separates the two areas), along with the stairwell going up to the second floor.  Since we already had our couches and media in the back living room, we weren't sure what to do with the front one.

There were lots of possibilities, but I eventually decided that I'd like to make it a library of sorts.  The wall of just the living room section was about 15 feet long.  I envisioned a posh space with a couple of fun couches, floor lamps, a cozy rug, and a long row of lovely custom built-in shelves filled with books and other special mementos.

Back to reality, we just dropped our savings on a house.  Not really any spare pocket change for fifteen feet of nice custom built-in wall to wall bookshelves.

Enter our Ikea hack.  We are definitely not the first homeowners to have used Ikea bookshelves to create built-in looking bookshelves, but I like to think we put our own special touch on the project.

Here's how we did it:

1. First, we bought lots and lots of Billy bookshelves.  I spent a while on the Ikea website looking at the different variations and measurements of the Billys that are offered.  Billys are pretty much the most basic shelving system Ikea offers, you could go with some of the other choices if you preferred, but we wanted something simple that we could add on to however we wanted.

The Billy system comes with lots of options.  You can have skinny Billys, wide Billys, Billys with glass doors or wood doors.  Billys in all shapes, sizes, and colors!

Your basic Billy bookshelf

Skinny Billy on a diet

We lucked out because for our space, a combo of four wide Billys and three skinny Billys fit almost perfectly. If you want to try this project, make sure you measure your space first.  Ikea even offers a build your own option on their website, so you can see what combo of shelving units will work in your space and what it will look like.

We also bought the height extension shelving pieces for each unit.  This was basically just something that added an extra shelf to the top of each Billy, making our wall-to-wall bookshelf a little taller.

How exciting, a Billy shelf extension unit

Most importantly, do NOT forget to include the baseboard molding in your calculations. Your wall-to-wall length may be 15 feet, but you need to subtract a couple inches to account for your molding, unless you plan on removing it to slide your bookshelves in.  I'll tell you how we dealt with our molding soon.

Altogether, the purchase of the shelves cost us just under $500.  Not cheap, but when you consider you're getting fifteen feet of bookshelf, not too bad either (especially when you think about how much custom work would've cost).

2.  My next step was to assemble all the bookshelves.  This was not fun.  Mostly because there were 7 of them and it was pretty overwhelming.

I really wanted to add something special to these shelves. The back of a Billy bookshelf is basically a long sheet of particle board, aka, cardboard.  It doesn't look nice.  White painted creased cardboard doesn't fly with custom built-in bookshelves.

I knew I wanted to decorate the backs of the shelves, but did I want to paint it? Wallpaper? Fabric?  My first instinct was to wallpaper them, but I had a hard time finding some economical wallpaper.  Plus, I've never worked with wallpaper before in my life...so I went with fabric.  I figured I could staple or glue fabric to the back of each board and give my shelves some extra pizzazz.

My next challenge was figuring out where in town I could by fifteen square feet of the same fabric.  Not sure why I didn't just buy online, but I ended up roaming through JoAnn's one day.  I couldn't find several bundles of the same fabric, but I did find multiple bundles of the same pattern in two different colors.  I bought everything they had and hoped it'd be enough.  Obviously I'm really good at well-thought out projects, right?

I set to work on covering the particle backboard of each Billy with fabric.  I placed the fabric pattern-faced down on the floor, put the particle board on top of it, and cut the fabric so it had about two inches of excess on all sides.  I then hot glued these edges on the back of the particle board, being careful to evenly stretch the fabric as I glued.

Two things here, first, I don't know if I'd recommend using hot glue as I did...How long will hot glue hold fabric to cardboard?  These book shelves are here to stay, so hopefully my fabric will stay in place...forever.  I would maybe add some staples or something to make this more permanent.  Second, be careful what sort of fabric you choose.  My fabric was heavily patterned, and any extra stretch in one area was really obvious in my final product, making the pattern not line up all the way across my shelves sometimes (but nothing too bad, no worries).

Once I got my backing all situated, we could finish completing the assembly of each unit.  You sort of slide the cardboard backing in notches on the back of the unit, so that will also help hold my fabric in more permanently.

Here's my husband nailing the back board to the shelving unit.  You  can see my fabric edges peeking around.

3.  Next it was time to set up all the units on the wall.  Nervous!  Will they fit?  This can be slightly stressful because, let's face it, you're working with Ikea products here.  Plus you put them together.  Things can be a little crooked, a little uneven, etc.  Luckily, we didn't seem to have any major problems...

My husband used L-brackets to attach the top of each unit to the wall, just to up the safety factor.  Especially needed in houses with small kiddies or rambunctious doggies.

Work in progress

Ta Da!  Do you spot my serious mistake?

Here is our new wall-to-wall bookshelf.  It took me a while to figure out the best color pattern, but I think it worked out well.

At this point, I realized I had put one of the pieces on backwards (see top right corner skinny shelf), but as everything was all nailed together and what not, I could not fix it.  No biggie since we planned to cover the shelves with trim and molding.

Bonsai doggie Leo is a shelf accessory

4.  Once our unit was up, we measured the gaps on the ends between the shelves and the wall (caused mainly by our molding on the baseboards), measured the distances between shelves, and measured the distance from the floor to the top of the bottom shelf.  This way we knew how big/small the trim we bought needed to be.  We spent a long time at Home Depot mulling over what sort of molding and trim we wanted.  We went with a really basic trim for all the edges except the bottom, which was more substantial.

One weekend when I was miserably working at the office, my loving husband spent an afternoon painting all the trim white and nailing them to the shelves.  Basically the edges of each bookshelf got trim, so there was "double trim" between shelves, does that make sense?  You could also buy thicker trim that covered the edges of two bookshelves totally.  We didn't put trim on the edges of the shelf ledges themselves, since most of them are movable and we might want to adjust them someday.

Here's the unit once we added molding and trim:

Leo admiring our handy work (no he just loves those peacock feathers for some reason).
Please ignore the paint splotches on the left, we were still figuring our what color we wanted!

You can see we still have a slight gap between the wall and the unit.  It sort of ruins the custom built-in facade, but the logistics of getting it perfectly flush with the wall were too difficult and we think it looks just fine :)

5.  To complete the look, my husband wired in some overhead lighting.  Before installing the last shelf, he dropped a plugged-in extension cord behind the shelves so we could have some lighting.

oooooooh!

6.  Decorate, decorate, decorate!  I spent a long time playing around with the adjustable shelves.  I didn't want the unit as a whole to look too symmetrical.  I made sure to put my heaviest books and display items along the bottom or middle shelves, the ones that weren't adjustable, since they are probably the strongest.  I had a lot of fun just going to Hobby Lobby and buying cute items for display - vases, frames, bird cages, candles, bookends...My favorite item is the turquoise vase with the peacock feathers, right in the middle of the unit.  You may also notice that many of my display items are things I've bought from Etsy!

Once I put all my books on the shelf, I was amazed at how it suddenly looked like I owned no books, just because the shelf was so huge.  I look forward to having tons of space for our library collection to grow.

Other than painting, this was the first major project we undertook for our new house.  It was a lot of work, but definitely worth it.  I love the extra pop that the fabric backing adds to the shelves.  When we have guests over, the wall-to-wall library is usually one of the first things they notice.  We finally got couches (like, 11 months later!) for the room, so hopefully we will be getting more use out of our library soon.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!  Please let me know if you have any questions.

Throw Me Somethin' Mister!

Mardi Gras 2012 is Tuesday, February 21.  That means we are right in the thick of Mardi Gras season for the next month!  This time of year makes me think of king cake, blaring trumpets, and lots and lots of beads. 

When I was little, my mom often took us to the huge (and family-oriented) parades in Kenner and Metarie, just outside of New Orleans.  Every year I was in college (all 6 of them, haha), I squished in a car with my friends and we drove to New Orleans, usually jamming about 12 people into one hotel room.  Mardi Gras in New Orleans is truly a unique experience.  I probably wouldn't be able to handle it now that I'm older, but the memories of limping down Bourbon Street in sticky shoes, eating Popeye's red beans and rice at 3am, and sitting on someone's shoulders desperately trying to catch the biggest beads will always make me smile.

Now that we are in Houston, we celebrate a very sedate Mardi Gras season.  My husband made a king cake, and I've decided to honor Mardi Gras by creating earrings with authentic parade doubloons.  If you aren't that familiar with Mardi Gras traditions, you may know about catching beads at parades, but there are also doubloons.  Each year every Mardi Gras krewe creates limited edition doubloons, which are basically big shiny aluminum coins, to throw at their parade.  The doubloons usually have the year, the krewe name, and the theme or name of the krewe's parade that year engraved on them.

These Mardi Gras earrings are a great way to wear a little piece of Mardi Gras tradition during this season, whether you are participating in carnival season somewhere in Louisiana, or just want to celebrate the good times wherever you call home!

Silver doubloon earrings by Lazy Owl Boutique

Shiny blue doubloon earrings by Lazy Owl Boutique

Gold Mardi Gras earrings by Lazy Owl Boutique

 

Party like it's 2012

Hello!  Welcome to 2012!  Obviously I did not intend on taking a nearly two-month long vacation from the blogosphere, but December and the holidays turned out to be busier than I thought.  I hope that all of you had a peaceful (and successful, if you are a fellow Etsian like myself) holiday season!

With the beginning of every new year, I like to follow the trend of setting some goals and coming up with a resolution or two.  This year I read an article about the 101 Things in 1001 Days Challenge.  1001 days is three years, so coming up with 101 goals in 3 years gives you the time and opportunity to do some serious long-term thinking and planning.

2012 Weekly Planner PDF by milas on Etsy

 
I then stumbled upon the awesome website, Day Zero, and decided to set up my very own 101 things list.  You can see my list here.  I still haven't thought of all 101 things, I could only get about 80, so I have some room to grow.  I tried to come up with a mix of fun things I've always wanted to do and serious goals I need to do, along with a few things that I'd love to happen but don't know if they are possible (like weigh 140 pounds...ha...ha....).

I welcome you to create a Day Zero list with me to motivate yourself to meet your goals for the next three years. 

Here are a few of the items on my list, many of them pertaining to Lazy Owl Boutique.  They say you should make your goals quanitifiable and specific, so you can see I chose a specific number for many of them.

- Learn how to sew
- Cook a meal in the crock pot (I've told you I like never...cook)
- Paint every room in the house (ouch)
- Go to the beach (yay!)
- Learn Italian
- Go to Italy (TBD in a later post!)
- Cook 10 recipes from Pinterest
- Make 150 sales on Etsy (hopefully over the next 3 years, this will be possible, so far I'm at 10 out of 150)
- Write 50 blog entries!  Here we go!
- Sell at 5 craft shows (hopefully more)
- Make 30 things from Pinterest
- Read 75 books
- Eat at every Pappa's restaurant (it's a Houston thing)
- Make an ottoman/bench out of our old coffee table
- Eat on our wedding china at least twice (since we've never eaten on it at all)
- Bake 10 different types of cupcakes, yay!
- Be on the frontpage of Etsy 5 times (I've managed to get on it once this year already!)

So, now you can follow along with me as I try to complete this goals over the next 1001 days.  Let me know if you decide to make your own list, and we can share.  I need more ideas for goals!

Stocking Stuffers and a Sale

Happy almost Thanksgiving yall!

In honor of Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday, I'm offering free shipping all this week.  Use coupon code TURKEY for FREE domestic shipping!  This is a great way to get unique, handmade gifts without having to fight the crowds at the mall, but without having to pay extra for shipping!

Sneak a peek at some of the cutie patootie stocking stuffers, all for $14 or less, that I have in stock right now.  I'm about to list TONS more over the week too!

Mint green rosette studs for just $9!



Hot pink mum earrings for $10

   




Cute as a button! Heart button earrings

   

Plum rose earrings





 

   

 


Gold wire-wrapped sea green pearl ring



Mint Dahlia adjustable ring



  









It's *almost* the most wonderful time of the year...

Sniff, sniff....do you smell the holidays coming?  Or maybe your nose is just running from the allergies you get during the changing of the seasons?  Or maybe that is just me.

Here in southeastern Texas, it is still rather warm (as in mid-70s) even though we are approaching Thanksgiving.  Today I think the low is actually in the 40s. Woo!  I am ready for colder weather, mostly because I'm ready to wear my many pairs of boots...

I have been really slacking on the updating front lately.  It has been a busy couple of months, first the half marathon and Disney trip, then the craft show, then the stray dog issue...Since then I have had a terrible bout of food poisoning and some really busy weeks at work.  I have almost hit the 6 month mark at my new job so I've had some new responsibilities transition to me.

In the meantime, I have focused all my Lazy Owl energy on listing new items in my shop, hoping to capitalize on that upcoming holiday shopping rush.  Take a peek at some of my new items, these beauties are the perfect accessory for upcoming holiday parties:


Emerald and gold earrings



Black and gold wire-wrapped ring



Rose old hollywood earrings

And my new personal favorite, these lovelies:

Rainbow vitrail gold earrings



I also have been working hard on a custom order for a bridal party, which I just shipped off this morning, so that was pretty exciting.  It was my first wedding order, and the bride was wonderful to work with.  Plus, the earrings she chose for her bridesmaids are one of my favorite pairs:



What have yall been doing to get ready for the holidays?  I need to shfit focus from my Etsy shop back to getting ready for my next craft fair.  I also plan to write a post featuring a few of my stocking stuffer items, along with some promotions for Black Friday/Cyber Monday.  Next week we are taking some time off for Thanksgiving, so I'm happy for the excuse to relax :)

Happy Holidays!

First craft fair experience

Sorry it has taken me so long to update about my first craft fair experience.  Last week (on Halloween), we picked up a stray dog.  We could not keep him since we already have 2, one being a newly rescued puppy, so I spent the week desperately trying to find an adoption/foster program that would take him in.  EVERY no-kill rescue program in the city of Houston was at max capacity.  Just when I thought we were going to have to send him to animal control (and basically sign his death warrant, as he was a big black pit mix), I found a friend in Baton Rouge who would give him a loving home.  AMEN!

Moving on to a totally unrelated note, here are pics and a review of my booth from my first craft show on October 29. 

 

I had paid for an outside booth, and luckily the weather was nice, although a bit chilly.  It was the first weekend of colder temps in Houston this fall.  As you can see, thanks to the suggestions from yall, I did cave in and make a small sign.  Obviously it's nothing special, just paint on a piece of blue poster board, but I figured this sign was better than no sign.  I've already devised a better banner for my next show, so have no fear.

I made a few last minute changes to my set up, and put my printer's tray of crystal earrings on the taller table rather than the small card table as planned.  The sun was shining into one corner of my area, and I wanted to try to put the crystal earrings in the sun where they could really sparkle!

 

Necklaces and stud earrings were displayed on my card table...That's a mannequin from Pottery Barn, a Goodwill frame with hooks and fabric, and another Goodwill frame with twine strung across the back and mini clothes pins to hold up my earring cards.

Here's my booth as a whole.  As far as my experience went, my day was SLOW.  I was really excited to be there and excited about my booth display, since I worked so hard on it...but I quickly realized that this show did NOT have the right audience for me.  It was the 40th year of this show at an established Episcopal church in a suburb of Houston.  The crowd was about 80% 60+ ladies.  Nothing against the older crowd, they just weren't into my stuff.  The tupperware ladies were the booth next to me and they were selling like hotcakes (however I did overhear their total revenue at the end of the show, and they didn't make much more than me, mostly because everything they sold was from their $1-$3 bins). 

It was at least a learning experience.  I made back about three times the booth fee, but that still wasn't much.  Most everyone that bought something from me was one of the few young moms there, buying something for themselves or for their daughters.  My rosette stud earrings were popular for the daughters and I sold mostly those.  Much to my surprise, people were most interested in the rosette studs and my button rings.  People just loved buttons.  Unfortunately I didn't make many of my button wire rings large enough to fit the fingers of the older ladies (I generally make them sizes 5-7 to aim for the more youthful Etsy crowd who for some reason seem to have smaller fingers haha).  I didn't even list any of the stud earrings in my Etsy shop until after the show, so I was surprised at that.  I had assumed that my old hollywood crystal jeweled earrings would be the biggest crowd pleaser, particularly in my white printer's tray display, but not very many people looked at them.  I am thinking it's a little early to build a hypothesis though based on this one show.

I also got some experience using Square, which went very smoothly.  About half my transactions were via credit card, and Square deposited the money in my account within a couple days.  No problems there!

Finally, I got an opportunity to just step out of my shell for a day, which I'm sure I really needed.

Stud display above. Pictured below are my old hollywood style earrings displayed on an antique printer's tray, a shutter from re-Habitat, and a wire file folder holder from Hobby Lobby.

I'm really looking forward to my next show.  Since I created SO much inventory for this past one, I won't have to bust my butt over the next few weeks making things.  This one will be December 3 & 4, two whole days, and I'm thinking the demographic will be more my speed, at least I'm hoping!

Please let me know what you think of my booth display and if you have any suggestions for me!

Preparing for my very first craft show

Ahhhhhhhhhh.  Saturday I'm vending in my very first craft show/fair/festival/whatevs.  I'm pretty scared.  I'm a pretty socially awkward/shy person, so I'm also pretty anxious about just putting myself out there and interacting with *strangers*! Haha.

As you may know, I'm an avid researcher and reader for any topic I'm unfamiliar with.  Thus, I've been scouring the blogosphere and Etsy forums and reading all about how to prepare for a craft show.  Other than just general nerves, I feel like I'm as prepared as I can be.  I've had the tables set up in my living room for about 2 weeks now.  I've set up my Square account and practiced swiping credit cards.  I've got $100 in cash change.  I've got receipt books, an inventory spreadsheet and a clip board, handheld mirrors, a vending apron, table risers....

The past month I've taken my inventory from about 45 items to 240 items (wowzers!).  I've also been diligently working on creating displays and a table setup as cheaply as possible.

Here's my practice setup thus far (I haven't ironed the table cloth yet so please ignore the wrinkles!)

Here's a summary: I've got a 4 foot table on the left with a printer's tray that my helpful husband spray painted white and screwed in tons of little half inch brass hooks.  I hung crystal earrings of various sizes on the hooks.  On that table, I also have a cheap wrought iron file folder holder and an old little shutter as earrings displays.

The table cloths are just cheap full size bed sheets I found in a neutral tone.  I bought a little cheap lace tablecloth to spice up the crystal earrings table.

My main 6 foot table has all my stud earrings on the right (hopefully I'll be listing some of these in my Etsy shop soon).  I bought the main three frames on this table from Goodwill for cheap and spraypainted them.  The one in the center is actually a memo board I covered with new beige fabric.

You can see the ring box I discussed making in this post in the center of my table.

The memo board dispays all my bunting necklaces, and the blue frame on the left has hooks on the top to hold my other necklaces.



I hope the printer's tray will grab some peoples' attention...

Bunting necklaces!

For the stud earring display, I strung twine along the back of the open frame and used tiny sized clothing pins to hang up my earrings cards.

I found the little wire ferris wheel at Goodwill and used it to hang my charm earrings.  I also got little tiny canvases, spray painted them brown, and used them as my pricing signs.  It was quite difficult grouping over 200 items into just a few price ranges, but I really did not want to price each item individually as I thought it'd just be too time consuming.

What do you think?  Give me your feedback!  My biggest worry is that I do not have a SHOP NAME anywhere on my table! I mean, I have my business cards out, and I had bought a large canvas to paint Lazy Owl Boutique on, but there's just no room to put it out on the table so I gave up....hopefully it's not too big of a deal.  I'm thinking if this whole craft fair venture is successful, I'll order some sort of professional banner with my name and logo and everything.

Wish me luck yall!