If you want to DIY yourself some built-in's... do it this weekend!

So I noticed on Ikea's site that Billy bookcases are on sale this weekend only!!  Instead of $69 bucks for one shelving unit, they are selling them for $49 each (black and white only).  I think they were cheaper for a one time sale over Christmas, but this is still a pretty good deal.  If you want to DIY yourself some bookcases like ours, now is the time to get started!!

I mentioned in an earlier post that the jury was still out as to whether or not it was worth it for us to customize the billy's or if it would have been better to build them ourselves.  In the end, since we ended up doing so much custom work (adding crown, building up the base, cutting part of one shelving unit down so that it would fit around the bumped out wall, adding an end panel to the one side, replacing the backing with beadboard... whew!) Doug felt that it would have been easier to do it from scratch.  But, if you're going to do a more simplified built in version, I think it would be worth it, and easy to do!  Wanna a bit more inspiration?  Check some of these ones out.

Painting out the back in a fun color looks awesome.  I wish I was brave enough to try this in my house...



In both of these cases, they just attached the shelves to the wall, trimmed out the top and sides with flat stock and painted it out in a similar shade of white to make it look like one unit, not three.

Both images are from House and Home

Man, these pictures of perfectly styled bookcases make me want to head downstairs and start tinkering with ours... if only I had nice stuff to put on them.

Or... if you didn't want to do an entire wall of built in shelves, you could always pick up one shelf and customize it to make it extra special.  The DIY experts at Young House Love  did it in the office of their old house (see the transformation here).  Isn't this cute?

Here are a few more ideas if you feel like hacking a Billy...

both images from here

If you're looking for a weekend project, I just found one for you.  You're welcome :)  If anyone out there decides to attempt such a project, please send me a picture!!  I would love to see...