1.26.2011

Built-in Bookcases - An Awkward Corner (Update 4)

Hubby is still working away on the bookshelves and doing a super fantastic job. (Go Jim!) We're having a few friends over on Saturday for a little party so we really need to get things in shape so we can at least put some spare furniture down there and clean-out the guest room for visitors! Yikes!

We did run into a bit of a dilemma with how to deal with the corner.  Backtracking a bit - we originally were just going to fill the nook in the back of the family room with bookshelves and call it a day.  But, then we started thinking about where to place the TV and sofa, and we realized that putting the TV on the back wall would cause us to put the sofa in the middle of the room and really cut it off.  So we changed it up and moved the TV to the right wall.  
I thought about just putting a piece of furniture under the TV and calling it a day.  A little more thinking and talking and we realized we have a LOT of books still in boxes and if we filled this wall with bookshelves too then we would be able to unpack more boxes.  And, we could use the lower shelves for more toys and kids books.  MORE toys. 

Now we had to create a true corner in the built-in and this was a first for us.  Hubby did a bunch of searching online and in his many woodworking magazines.  We didn't want the span to be too large there or the shelves could not be supported properly.  So, we played with moving the bookshelf to the right of the corner back and forth. 

Here you can see the shelf on the right pushed up to the base cabinet on the back wall.  Jim and our friend Nick thought it closed off the corner too much and they were right (so glad I listened to them). 
So we fixed it by pushing that shelf to the right which creates a more open feeling on the top as well as a set of supportable corner shelves. 
Initially we thought the narrow space on the bottom right of the corner would be a wasted space.  After thinking about it for a few minutes I realized that smaller toys could fit in this space easily, but also small bins or baskets to house toys and later video game equipment or DVDs. 

Out of a problem came a solution and hopefully a really useful space!  Ironically, I think the shelves are going to make the space feel a bit larger because they will contain the stuff and it makes the room feel less long and narrow.  Can't wait to get these painted out and the TV mounted!

What's your latest DIY problem that you are trying to solve?