Crafting BY Dummies. DIY Bookshelf Upgrade.

When we moved into our house it was perfect for us.

A huge upgrade over our tiny townhouse that we were beginning to bust out of.

Unlike our previous residence, this house had a yard and a garage and hardwood floors.  It came with a deck, and a front porch, and a full basement, and the most beautiful built ins.

Honestly, I didn’t love the house, I just loved it’s built in style.

But, like anything else, as time has gone on and I’ve grown accustomed to looking at this space with a critical-this-can-be-so-much-better-if-it-just eye, I’ve found plenty of things I’d like to make different about this space we couldn’t sell if we had to call home.

As The Dudes grow, I find that we can use all of our spaces differently.

For example, we don’t need 4 playrooms (okay two official play rooms along with play “areas” in our family room and living room and bathroom; do not ask me why the need toys in the bathroom).  Now that the baby gear and ride on toys are a thing of the past, we can probably do fine with one official playroom (located in our basement) and one upstairs multi-use room (which I kinda think was designed to be a dining room, but is currently used as a small eating area/play area/homework center/dog-living-room).

Which brings me back to the built-ins that made me sorta fall in love with this house in the very first place.

Turns out, once I got in here and started expecting them to do my bidding, they were relatively useless.  The wood was too thin and lacking in support to actually put anything (like books) on them.  They were spaced too far apart to place small things on because of the large space it left.  The only shelf that we got good use out of was the one on the floor, where we placed toy bins, filled with overflow toys from all of the other designated toy storing areas.

Only, we don’t require that sort of overflow storage any longer.

And, I kinda just want to put a freaking book on my freaking book shelves.

So…

I fixed it!

Went to that big hardware super store, after measuring of course, and had them cut me some plywood.

Brought them home, painted them to match, found out I actually needed to saw and sand a bit to make them fit (hello using an electric saw is serious fun), and finally, voila…

Sure, sure, she’s cute enough to be distracting in this photo.  Let’s see how you feel at the end of this post.

Happy, healthy, book holding shelves.

Sans toys. 

Filled with grownup things.

That I can love because they are useful.

Bonus, I’ve discovered something about this whole DIY bit: you have to be fearless.

Like, you can’t be afraid that you’re gonna break your house (unless electricity is involved, and then, seriously, be afraid) or your bookshelf, or your chair, or whatever you’re working on.  You have to trust that you will be successful in your DIY endeavor, and if you happen to not be, you’ll be able to call your reasonably priced handy man who is happy to keep secrets from your spouse deal with the consequences of that.

Harder to deal with?

When your pet pooch decides she’s going to attempt to snatch something down from recently-installed-but-not-firmly-attached shelves, only to have them come crashing to the ground leaving your prized collection of snow globes from around the country shattered on the floor below.

Nothing to do then but call your husband and ball your eyes out because, sure your snow globe collection is sorta Oakie, but you love it, you’ve had some of them longer than you’ve had your children, and they’re irreplaceable, okay!

Not so cute now, is she?

And, yes, if you’re wondering, the dog is still here, but I am SO not talking to her right now.  Or ever maybe.