Good morning teeda!

I am almost positive it was the plain white Billy bookcases we used. The bit over the entrance to the living room was, in all fairness, a piece of regular lumber (not part of the IKEA set).

Instead of filler like in a kitchen cabinet (which would fit flush in between the cabinetry), our "filler" was the fluted trim which was proud of the cabinetry. We did this for two reasons: the trim would hide any out-of-square issues (that was one wobbly house!) and two, by having the trim on the outside it really hid the IKEA lines and made it look more of a built-in piece.

Now, that bookcase is only ~12" deep, so I'm not sure that would work for a window seat. Although, like our over-the-entrance shelf, that's something which could be made out of something else -- a piece of kitchen cabinet? I'm not super familiar with the IKEA kitchen cabinets, but it would be the right depth and it's right there in the store!

I'm excited about your project. I'm about to take my children for a walk, so later I'll poke around my photos and see if I have any more detailed ones of the bookcase. (We sold that house in '06.)

I'm pretty sure that Nicole from "making it lovely" made her built-ins from Ikea bookshelves. She has a great blog. She used the landing at the top of her stairs and turned it into a library. It was just featured in a magazine...

Here is a link that might be useful: Making it Lovely blog

rmkitchen, thank you so much! I checked out the IKEA website and it looks like a couple of the 31.5" Billy bookcases with top extensions will be perfect. We will fill in the gaps as you did with wood fillers, and probably add a bit of crown along the top. It's okay that the cases aren't very deep--the room is not large and we really need it just for her books and artwork. I'm thinking the window seat could project out a little bit from the bookcases. It will be mostly decorative (aside from providing a place for her stuffed animals to reside).

By the way rmkitchen, I just love the photos you have posted of your kitchen and other areas in your home. I love the way you juxtaposed the b/w toile sofa with more contemporary objects in the room. You certainly have a flair!

Mommacass, thanks so much for the link to the "making it lovely" blog. I intend to spend some time there later this evening.

I'm really excited now. Looks like I'll be able to do the whole thing for only a few hundred dollars! I've been gathering vintage furniture and bedding for the past year (she wants a "nature" theme which has been a fun challenge). Can't wait to start putting it together.

Please come back and post photos, teeda! I'd love to see what you do with your daughter's room ....

And I'm so sorry -- while writing you this morning I totally forgot about the extensions to make the bookcases taller. We also used a piece of "filler" (we used plain wood) to make a mini-soffit so our crown moulding could attach to the soffit (and the soffit attached to the top of the bookcase).

Does that make any sense? By having the crown attach to both the ceiling and the bookcase, it absolutely looks built-in. I can promise you that every single person who came over to our house could not believe those were IKEA carcasses. Nothing against IKEA, but because of the fact that it looked built-in.

Another thing, on the exposed sides of the bookcase (not the interiors of the bookcase, but the sides which face the passageway) we used glue and finish nails to attach luan -- that really thin wood panel -- which I then painted. I think not having melamine sides (for example, which will face your daughter's window) also really helps it appear built-in. Of course, in your daughter's case those exposed sides might be the perfect spot for hanging her artwork, so you mightn't need to add the luan. Win win!

Thank you for your kind words about our home. That was nice to read.

Good luck with your project!

rmkitchen,
I would love to see a photo of that bookcase you did if you happen to have one. I would love to try something like that.

teeda -- you might be able to use the 24" deep x 24" tall over-the-refrigerator kitchen cabinet carcasses for the base of the window seat. Just be sure to attach the metal (not plastic) legs to the bottom to provide support. They come in two widths -- 30" and 36".

Hi lyban & teeda -- well, I searched and searched and I just cannot find any more detailed photos. Shoot! I totally thought I'd taken some but if I did I cannot find them now.

So lyban, this is what I have:

Here you can see we're putting up the Billy bookcases and the extension (for 8' ceilings) cabinets will go on top -- there's already one up on the far left.

Here the cabinets & extensions are all in. We purchased (insanely inexpensive!) low-voltage puck lights also from IKEA: the space between the tippy-top cabinet and the ceiling is holding the wires and transformer. I now know about line-voltage (as in, NOT low-voltage, so not requiring a transformer) puck lights, and if I were doing it now I'd use that instead -- not having to figure out where to hide a transformer is pretty nice!.

With it all done, you can see how we attached a small piece of "filler" (just a long thing piece of wood) to the top of the cabinets -- it creates our "soffit." The crown moulding goes from the ceiling to the top of this soffit, so it looks all a piece.

Here, I just tried to get a close-up (hurting the photo quality):

I don't know if you can the light switch in the bottom right-hand corner -- we cut through the back of the bookcase and then trimmed the rough cut-out with half-round.

Ingenius use of trim, rmkitchen! It's hard to believe those are ikea bookcases. How did you attach them to the walls?

Thanks, rmkitchen, for the extra photos and construction details. I do like the idea of using painted luan on the exposed sides. Did you have any trouble finding a paint that matched the melamine white? (I've always had trouble matching whites when different materials were involved).

sarchlos, thanks for the suggestion to use a refrigerator top cabinet for the window seat. I will check our unfinished stock cabinetry.

Thank you rmKitchen. You did a good job on the cabinets. They really look like they are built-ins.

Rmkitchen, or anyone else...I LOVE this concept!! I have been inspired to try this in my own daughter's room. She is 16, and is a book lover, a CD lover and a packrat. Oh and she is taking a set of courses this year as a junior that seem identical to a Lit major in college! (Women's Literature, Literature of Science Fiction, AP Brit Lit, and Philosophy of Fiction). It all adds up to lots of books and stuff in her room.

Anyway my questions are:

-What widths do the Billy bookcases come in? The website is really not all that easily navigated, at least for me. I *think* the cases come in 15 1/2 or 31 1/4 inch widths. The CD shelves seem to be 7 7/8 inch wide. But are there any other widths to choose from?

-Is there anywhere either on the IKEA site or elsewhere I could plug in my wall dimensions and get ideas for the best combination of cases to fill the space? I've been trying to do it by just calculating myself but I end up with one wall having almost a 7 inch gap. There must be a systematic way to do this!

-You mentioned using a board across a doorway. I have a window so that is something I might want to do. How did you attach the board? Seems that if I just laid a board across it would either have to be the entire width of the room, or it would disrupt the line of the extensions on either side.

-For trim, did you do anything at the bottom? And you mentioned putting in a soffit at the top to attach the crown. How did you do that-glue, nails?

Any help appreciated. The IKEA store in my area is quite a distance so I'm trying to do a run tomorrow to avoid the weekend crowds.

Ann

running -- go to ikea.com and download their room planner (doesn't work on a Mac, but is very easy to use if you have a PC). This will give you ideas about bookcase configurations and allow you to see what will fit in the room.

Then go to ikeafans.com to get information about ways to dress up the bookcases.