Nook Transformation

If you paid attention to the photos I posted of our house you may have noticed the large nook in the living room. I hated it so much because it seemed like a waste of space where nothing could really go. I wanted to make it a built-in bookcase but didn’t really know how to do it. So, of course, I turned to Pinterest. The tutorial that I found for a DIY bookcase on Pinterest can be found here.

Our nook was a little on the large size: 8 feet tall, 32 inches wide and 21 inches deep. The shelves were going to be large, perfect for displaying large items like the porcelain horse head! We decided to make 5 shelves which divided the space into four 1.5’ tall shelves (including the bottom space) and two 1’ spaces at the top. We went to Home Depot and purchased all the need supplies.

Supplies:

¾” Particle Board

Chair Rail Creations 8” white (2)

1x2x8 Furring Strips (4)

Wood Filler

10x2.5 Screws

2.5” Finishing Nails

An employee at Home Depot was extremely nice and cut our particle board into 6 pieces that measured 32” by 19.5”. We kept the depth of the shelves shorter than the 21” nook because we were going to add decorative chair rail to the front (which added another inch) and we didn’t want the shelves to protrude from the nook.

I had already painted the nook green awhile back when I was painting the whole house. Alex painted all the wood pieces white and was ready to get to work.

At this point I think it is safe to defer to my husband on how the shelves were built.

This is now Alex speaking, taking over from Silvey. I was also responsible for documenting the process, which is why a lot of important information might be missing. This first picture shows the nook before we began installation of the shelves.

The particle board shelves had been cut at Home Depot and were a very snug fit. I cut the furring strips to fit underneath the back and sides of each shelf, ensuring that they were long enough to reach two studs each. I used a stud finder to determine the location of the studs and made sure to screw the strips into those studs the shelf could have simply rested on these supports with no additional connection, but I decided to hammer a few small finishing nails through the shelf into the supports just to keep things feeling solid.

The following image compares a completed shelf with a shelf in progress. Notice how the chair rail really gives the shelf a nice finished look. I applied the chair rail with a small amount of Gorilla Glue and three finishing nails. I had to cut a small opening in the back of the bottom shelf to allow room for the electrical and cable outlet.  

Each shelf had a gap in the back of about half an inch. This enabled the depth of each shelf to be set exactly the same as the others. I used wood filler to fill in the gaps, which actually took quite a while. I don’t think the wood filler putty was meant for large applications like this…but it did work.

I also used wood putty to fill in the small gaps along each side of the shelves and along the edges of the chair rail. Once dried and sanded, the edges looked seamless.

Once all of the edges had been filled and sanded it was time to begin painting. I first taped off the edges of the shelves and painted the walls, shelf undersides, and support strips green. I used paper bags to keep paint from dripping onto the shelves.

Here is a view from underneath. Once the entire underside of each shelf had been pained to match the walls it really made the supports disappear. 

And there you have it. A fairly easy project that took a bit longer than anticipated (Silvey thought I could do it in a day!) Here is the final product…Silvey gets credit for the decorations.

Cost Break Down:

Furring Strip 4 at .75 = $3.00

Particle Board = $18.98

Chair Rail 2 at $8.49 = $16.98

Wood Filler = $2.98

Screws = $8.91

Finish Nails = $3.47

Paint (already had) = Free

Total: $54.32

Because the people at Home Depot are amazing supporters of the military after a 10% discount our final total was = $48.88