The Living room built-in project idea with Ikea Billy and a ladder
Have you ever tried to add some character to your home?
You know, spruce it up a bit, maybe with a nice bookshelf?
Well, let me tell you about our friend Laura here and her quest to hack the Ikea Billy bookshelf.
You see, Laura’s got this gorgeous, historic home, but it’s like living in the Upside Down from “Stranger Things” – nothing is level!
So, Laura wanted these bookshelves, and she’s thinking of something sleek and modern. But she heard her own mind, “Laura, you’ve got to stick with the period of the house. You don’t want to be that person who puts a flat-screen TV in a Victorian parlor.”
Now, custom built-ins aren’t cheap.
You’re basically paying someone to build a wooden maze in your living room.
So, Laura and her partner figured, why not hack the Ikea Billy?
She thought it’d been done before, but never in a 100-year-old house with more quirks than her previous relationship.
The 1st Challenge: Laura wanted to keep the antique trim intact in case the next owner wanted to return to the original “haunted mansion” aesthetic. And secondly, remember the Upside Down? Yeah, nothing is level. It’s like trying to build a bookshelf on a roller coaster.
So, she decided to assemble these Ikea bookshelves, right?
If you’ve ever put together Ikea furniture, you know it’s like deciphering hieroglyphics written by a caffeinated toddler.
You’ve got two of these, one of those, and a couple of extension cabinets that I’m pretty sure double as step stools for leprechauns.
Until Laura finally got these things together, the next dilemma was how to position them.
Her decision,
She spaced them out, folks. She got a 5.25-inch gap between them. Well, now, I don’t know about you, but that’s the perfect size for all those books you pretend to read when your friends come over. You know, the ones with titles like “The History of Quantum Mechanics” and “The Art of Sourdough Baking.”
So, after securing them to the wall (and praying they don’t end up in another dimension), she added some trim pieces to bridge the gaps. And Laura eventually got her custom built-in bookshelves, with just enough character to match her not-so-level, historic home.
What is the moral of the story, you say?
Embrace the quirks and imperfections of life. And when in doubt, just hack an Ikea Billy.