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Anyone want to see our new library/ Billy shelves?


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IMG_4885.JPG

 

We still need to get the doors for the rest of them (Ikea was out of them), but I'm happy with how it's coming along. I'm impressed with how much shelves can hold when they go all the way up to the ceiling!

 

Here's the blog entry with excruciating detail about the whole thing :)

 

http://boxycolonial.blogspot.com/2012/09/library-progress.html

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Some of those shelves look sort of empty---you should buy more books!!

 

Lara

 

:D

 

oh, there are more books! the poetry/drama shelf is around the corner in another room. And most of the kid fiction is still upstairs in their rooms, but it will probably come down soon. But then I think I'll move the non-school related picture books to a different room on a low, accessible shelf.....and my fiction's not even alphabetized yet! I'm just getting started!

 

We have the height extenders for the two shelves around the corner, too, just so everyone knows; we just haven't put them on yet (it would drive me crazy to have height extenders on some of the shelves and not other ones, so I just thought I should reassure anyone else who's as anal about symmetry as I am ;))

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Thank you for making my life so easy -- I'm copying you as soon as I have enough money!!

 

Now, make my life easy some more please and tell me -- what did you do with your formal dining room? We have a large breakfast area and just aren't formal diner-types.

 

I'd love to turn the space into something fun, but I'm not sure what.

 

But our living room is definitely turning into your library!

 

Thanks,

 

Alley

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Beautiful! I need to do a corner in my dining room. Does Billy not have a corner shelf? Or was it just that the ones you have fit your space so well?

 

They do have a corner shelf, and we actually bought one. It's the small one on the end--it's kind of hard to tell it's smaller from that angle, I guess. Anyway, as far as I can tell it's just the regular narrower shelf, only you're supposed to buy special brackets for it and set it at an angle in the corner. This was our plan, but, despite our careful (we thought) measuring....it didn't fit in the corner. But putting them at a right angle in the corner worked out fine; we just needed to move the shelf at the other end of the wall down maybe an inch to close the gap.

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Thank you for making my life so easy -- I'm copying you as soon as I have enough money!!

 

Now, make my life easy some more please and tell me -- what did you do with your formal dining room? We have a large breakfast area and just aren't formal diner-types.

 

I'd love to turn the space into something fun, but I'm not sure what.

 

But our living room is definitely turning into your library!

 

Thanks,

 

Alley

 

Well, our formal dining room is....a formal dining room. Sorry not to have been more creative :). It's actually a dining room/schoolroom....but it "passes" as a dining room pretty easily thanks to a couple of big pieces of furniture that hide the school stuff behind closed doors. We mostly eat in the kitchen, but we're liking having a big table to spread out at for school (and for occasional meals).

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Beautiful! I need to do a corner in my dining room. Does Billy not have a corner shelf?

 

The current offering for corners is a pair of special brackets, designed so that you can fix a 40cm Billy on the diagonal such that it lines up correctly with the Billies either side of the corner.

That's probably OK for the tall ones but no use for the low ones as you'd see the gaps and the fixing brackets. Even for the tall ones it wastes space.

 

They used to sell a proper corner unit. That takes up 60cm of each of the two walls and has an opening across the diagonal just a little wider than you'd get with a 40cm Billy. The space in the corners is a bit awkward, but useable (depending on how you arrange things on the shelves). The corner unit also accommodates deeper books than the standard Billies.

They are available secondhand - we've seen plenty listed on eBay.

 

Start with a corner unit and work outwards from there, combining Billies and Bennos as needed to fit the space. That will let you work in multiples of 20cm. If you need something else, you can cut down a Billy or Benno to fill the gap.

 

Hope that helps.

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So, could I get tall shelves to cover a wall but with half glass/half panel doors. My husband and I have been talking about changing our bookshelves. Our shelves are in our only family room and I wanted books behind doors for a cleaner look for our small room.

 

yep--they make those doors!

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Thanks again, everyone! Having a dedicated library is seeming sort of magical so far; I keep catching kids sitting in that chair reading random books about chess or the presidents :)

 

I love it! Was it difficult to put the height extenders on the shelves an then put them into place? My husband had a difficult time when he put ours together, he also had a hard time with the corner unit.

 

I don't think he had much trouble with the extenders--we put them one after the shelves were already in place (that's why the last ones aren't on yet; he wants to wait until we get all the doors on in case the shelves need to scoot around a bit more). The doors, on the other hand, have been a big pain so far--getting them to close right and stay closed. I'm not sure whether to blame Ikea or our probably not entirely level floors.

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:D

 

oh, there are more books! the poetry/drama shelf is around the corner in another room. And most of the kid fiction is still upstairs in their rooms, but it will probably come down soon. But then I think I'll move the non-school related picture books to a different room on a low, accessible shelf.....and my fiction's not even alphabetized yet! I'm just getting started!

 

We have the height extenders for the two shelves around the corner, too, just so everyone knows; we just haven't put them on yet (it would drive me crazy to have height extenders on some of the shelves and not other ones, so I just thought I should reassure anyone else who's as anal about symmetry as I am ;))

 

I feel MUCH better about this now. I can now confidently say I LOVE IT! :001_smile:

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