Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Bookcase Upgrade

Today's activity, upgrade a broken $15 bookcase that has survived 5 moves and either was going to turn out great... or it was going in the trash...

 
My husband and I picked out the fabric that we liked one afternoon and then when my sister was in town, the two of us figured out how to do this.  Originally, I was going to get a sheet of plywood or a sheet of styrofoam... I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to do it, but I just got started.
 
I took off the back... 1st step.



The top right corner was broken because of all of the moving... so I hot glued it.  I'm not sure that this is the best way to reattach the corner... but it's how I did it.  :)

 
When it was glued together, I ironed the fabric and then spaced it out the way I thought would be best.  I am not going to lie, if we had a print that had stripes or a linear/square pattern it would be obvious if it wasn't square.  This fabric was very forgiving... thank goodness!  I cut the fabric about an inch all the way around.



 
This is where my sister step in, I really needed 3 hands.  She was very helpful with the hot glue gun.  I made sure the fabric stayed tight.


 

 
The corners were tricky, so I cut the edges to help them fold nicer.  (Think of wrapping a present).



 
Can you begin to see it?

 
Now, I felt around for the holes that were already there.  This was suprisingly a little more difficult than I was expecting, but I found all the holes and poked matching holes in the fabric.  I used a screwdriver and scissors to make it possible.
 


 
I made sure the screws from the bookshelf would fit through, because once I started assembling the back again, it would be difficult to fix if the screws wouldn't go through. 


 
I laid the bookshelf face down and then placed the back on top.


I matched up the screws to their holes before I really punched them in... just to make sure there wasn't a problem.

 
 
And ta-da!




We started out putting it in the hallway... but I didn't like it there. 

 
So we tried a new location.  Much better!
 


Ta-da!
 


 
Love it! Not too bad of a day.  :)
 
 
 

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