Slowly But Surely

This summer I have two goals: to get in shape and to organize my house. So far I’m making slow progress on both. It took me about a week, but I finally finished this project:

It’s a corner bookcase for my office/sewing room. It’s made up of Billy bookshelves from IKEA: 2 narrow units and 1 wide unit that each have height extensions. They’re held together by the corner bracket that IKEA sells.

The process of covering the back of the bookshelves was the same as the bookshelf I put in our bedroom, but this project upped the ante. To begin with, there were 3 shelves and 3 height extenders, so there were 6 pieces to cover in fabric. Stretching the fabric, stapling it around the edges, and smoothing down the excess fabric with spray adhesive (lesson learned: use it outdoors, not in your dining room!) got a little old after the 4th piece. Also, I had ambiously (foolishly) chosen a print with bold horizontal and vertical lines so it was a little difficult to line up both axes to make sure they were straight. Also, attaching the height extensions to the top of the shelves was a bit of a fiasco because of the low ceiling but N. was very sweet and helpful and came up with a solution to the problem. So, it all worked out well in the end (phew!)

Now I just need to organize my books on the shelves and sort out the rest of the room. Once the rest of the room is presentable, I’ll post some pictures.