Take a look, it's in a book...

Well I am finally getting back in to this blogging thing and I have a few projects to catch up on. The nursery is almost complete which is good since Ada is due in about two months.

In the spirit of catching up on my blogging I will start with a project I saw on Pinterest and friends had many questions about on Facebook. I want Ada to be an avid reader so I created a reading corner with bookshelves on the wall. Here is the finished project:

For this post I am going to focus solely on the bookshelf project. I would love to think that I am inventive enough to come up with this idea on my own but with Pinterest I don't have to be; I just need to be creative enough to make other people's great ideas my own. I will call that inspiration rather than stealing. But for the sake of being fair here is the original blog where the idea comes from.

First, I had to decide where in the room I wanted the shelves to go to determine how long they would be. Originally, I wanted them on the other side of the room but after getting some of the nursery furniture in place I changed the layout of the room and this wall made the most sense for the shelves. The wall is about 5 1/2 feet so I decided to make the bookshelves 4 feet in length. With the spacing I wanted between shelves, 4 made sense so I knew I would need at least 16 feet of gutter to make my shelves. At Home Depot they sell these vinyl gutters in 10 foot lengths so I bought 2. Along with the length of gutter I did need to purchase the end caps which just popped on to the gutters to make a clean edge. I needed 2 for each shelf and were conveniently sold in 2 packs so I bought 4 total. Gutters come in both metal and vinyl but I chose vinyl for the ease and being more kid friendly. I also looked at other stores like Lowe's but found the gutters at Home Depot more what I was looking for. If you decide to make these shelves shop around a bit to find what you like. Here are the exact gutters I purchased for your reference. Unfortunately, Home Depot would not cut the gutters for us as "they only cut wood" so we had to purchase a saw. We asked the store associate which saw would work best and he directed us to a very inexpensive mitre saw. This saw did cut the gutters but it was a pain in the butt and I feel a hack saw or basically any other saw would have worked better. Fortunately, the end caps cover up all jagged edges so it really didn't matter. Here is the saw we were told to buy and the edges it left:

Altogether we purchased two 10 foot lengths of gutter, four 2 packs of end caps and a mitre saw for about $45. We already had screws at home and the other tools (or so we thought) we needed. This can be a very inexpensive project depending on what tools you already have and what you may need to purchase. These shelves are stylish and space-saving but can get as expensive as traditional shelves so take that into account if you are wanting to make these for the economical factor alone.

Installation should have been easy but became a big headache and my poor husband was very frustrated. One problem that we constantly run into is that the walls in our house are plaster rather than drywall so it makes drilling, hammering, screwing and attaching just about anything to the walls very difficult. That being said any project is also a lot easier if you have the right tools. We ended up having to purchase some tools which added to the cost of the project but made it a lot easier. If you do not have an electric drill, drillbits or a level you may find them very useful for this project and frankly good to have for future projects. We ended up purchasing a charger for our electric drill(after not being able to find the original), a set of drill bits and a laser level(that we later returned because it was made for use with drywall) and spent an extra $50 that we had not anticipated. The tools necessary for this project: a saw to cut gutters, a measuring tape, a level(laser or regular), screws(drywall if you have drywall), an electric drill, drill bits(if you wish to pre-drill your holes on the gutters), and a stud finder(optional but if you have drywall and do not know how to find the studs this may save some headache).

Once we had the right tools, I measured where on the wall I wanted each shelf (I think they are about a foot apart) predrilled holes in the gutters about 8 to 12 inches apart and then screwed each gutter into the wall making sure it stayed as level as possible. With our walls this was very difficult so they did not turn out perfect but once all the books are on you can hardly notice. We used regular screws but if you have drywall you should probably use drywall screws and find the studs rather than just drilling every 8 to 12 inches. Here is a picture of the screws in the shelves:

Using studs you will probably only need 3 screws per shelf instead of 5 like we used. Once screwed into the wall, they are done and ready to be dressed with books and stuffed animals.
A useful tip, the endcaps can be a little tricky to put on the gutters so put them on before attaching to the wall.




Here is a close up of the finished project:

All in all it was a pretty easy and inexpensive project that I think looks great. I had several books from my childhood and we received a lot of new books at our baby shower so it filled up in no time. Scatter in a few stuffed animals and it looks very decorative and is very functional. The best part is it takes up a whole wall that would otherwise be blank and saves precious floor space that would be eaten by a traditional bookshelf. For my small space it was the perfect choice.