Nursery Room - Book Shelves

One of the many blogs I follow for design inspiration and ideas  is House of Turquoise.  Back in November, really before I even started plotting and planning for the nursery, a post came up with a nursery, and there was an idea that I knew I wanted to implement.  The design is from Elizabeth Sullivan.

Image Source

Those book shelves.  I had to have them for the nursery.  I absolutely love to read.  As a kid, if I wasn't playing some sort of sport, you could find me with my nose in a book.  I actually used to even get in trouble for reading...I'd sneak into the closet well after bedtime, turn on the light in there, and get lost in a book.  My parents would come in and scold me.  I was that kid.  So this wall of books has been haunting my nursery visions for quite some time.

The bookshelves themselves are actually pretty simple to make.  I measured where I wanted them to go on the wall, and came up with 6 bookshelves that were 5 ft long.

We got five 10 ft boards of 1x4's, and five 6 ft of 1x2 boards.  They didn't have the 1x2's in the 10ft size, otherwise we just would've gotten 2 of those and one 6 ft board.  The 1x4's were for the back and the bottom, and the 1x2's were for the front.

We started on these a few weeks back during the week.  After dinner, we'd go out and put a few more shelves together.

First, we cut the 1x10's in half :

And then we pre-drilled screw holes in the back and attached the two 1x4's to each other.

Next, we applied glue to the front of the 1x4...

Then clamped either end of the 1x2 to the 1x4 to hold the boards into place, and then we nailed the pieces together.

So when we were done, we had six of these :

Chris thought initially that we were making the shelves too wide, and that the 1x4's should go on top of each other.  I told him I was sure Ana had plans for something similar, so we came in to check to see, and sure enough...she does!  If you want step by step plans on how to do this with pretty pictures, go see Ana White's post on how-to build it here.  And if you want to build anything else, do a search for a plan there.  She probably has the how-to's drawn up.  She's amazing.

I was actually getting anxious to get all of these built.  So anxious in fact that Chris took my nail gun from me.  He left for a volleyball game one night, and I told him I was too tired to go.  He was fine with that, but as he was walking out the door he said "oh, and no nail gunning while I'm gone!!!"  What?!?!?!  He literally TOOK MY nail gun (remember, it was MY birthday present from last year!!!) with him to volleyball.  He said a pregnant wife + a nail gun + home alone + night time did not add up.  Sigh...

Which is why I got to multi-tasking on our floor installation.  While Chris was hammering away at the floors, in-between making cuts for the edges for him, I primed and sanded all 6 of these bookshelves.

This past weekend, Chris and I split up painting duties.  It was such a beautiful weekend that we could both be outside painting.  He was priming our next project while I was putting layer upon layer upon layer of beautiful white paint on these bad boys.  I'd paint them, sand them down some, and paint them again.  I really wanted them to be a bright white and have a smooth finish.  I finished up with a coat of minwax's water based polycrylic.  It's the only top coat I'll use for white painted furniture.  It goes on and dries clear without yellowing the piece like typical polyurethanes do.

Finally, these bookshelves were ready for installation!  We found the studs in the wall, and screwed directly into those all the way up.  We had to be careful to keep these level and mount them exactly the same space apart from the wall.  We didn't want any sort of leaning effect going on in here!

After we had gotten them all up on the wall, I caulked in the screw holes.  I went back the next day and added yet another coat of paint to the backs and fronts of these.  My T.Mom had sent over some books for me to use here, and my girlfriend Steph got us a waikiki lullaby book, so we added in what books we had, and I absolutely LOVE the end result!

Obviously, she needs more books!  And we'll want to mix in the tall and short books, so that the bookshelves are more visually appealing.  Like the bottom two rows.

I seriously could not be any happier with how this turned out.  I love love LOVE it!  Chris was really unsure of the project until we put the books on, and he's thrilled too.  The top shelf is his shelf.  That's the books that Daddy gets to read to her, since he's the only one that can reach it!  I'll try to keep more of the soft / touch books on the bottom shelves to start off with.

And because I'm a sucker for a good before and after...  I took a picture of each wall once we got the junk cleaned out.  Here's what that wall looked like a month ago :

And here's what it looks like now!

What do you think?!  Are you as enamored by it as we are?!  This wall seriously makes me so giddy every time I walk into her nursery.  I love the way it's all turning out!

Happy Wednesday everyone!  Hope you guys are having a fantasic week!

Update : Want to see the bookshelves fully filled?!  Click on this link to check it out!

If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment or subscribe to the feed reader to get future posts delivered to your reader.


I'm linking up to the parties in my sidebar!