Ikea hack

I have always loved Ikea, especially those modular bookcase units that you can customize with drawers, doors, baskets, and dividers. But one thing has always been frustrating for me: no backing. I'm the type of person that likes to push my books to the back of a shelf instead of having them in one straight line.
So I've had Ikea's Kallax shelf unit for about 11 years. I also got this Kallax piece a few years ago that is slightly different in terms of dimensions. I knew wanted some sort of backing that would be lightweight yet easily removed if I wanted to change it somehow. I went to Home Depot, bought 2 sheets of 1/4" plywood, and had them cut me pieces to my exact dimensions. Not wanting to waste anything I've spent my hard earned money on, I took the extra pieces home (more on those in another post).
I debated painting the pieces but since it's unprimed wood it would have soaked up a ton of paint. Then I considered wallpaper, but at $44/roll it was way out of my price range. I was going to settle on a contact paper available at Home Depot, but my cousin vetoed it due to it's 'ugly' and 'too busy' pattern. I shopped around on Amazon and Target, not really liking any of the patterns I saw, until I decided to look at Lowe's. I found this beautiful teal Damask print on a white background, and at only $7/roll it was way cheaper. I didn't think to take pictures of the process because I wasn't fully sold on the idea of doing a blog yet. But, I have a few pictures of the bookshelves now to show you how it turned out. I ended up needing 2 rolls since the first one was about 20 square inches short; once again it was only $7 per roll so I was still in better shape than if I had gone with wallpaper. I laid my plywood pieces down on a long table and figured out which way I wanted the pattern to run depending on the bookcase and it's orientation. After slowly peeling off the backing of the contact paper a few inches at a time, I would smooth it down so no air bubbles were present. Since the pieces of wood were wider than the roll itself, I had to line up the pattern precisely (I'm a bit of a control freak) to cover each backing. After getting this perfect, I took a fresh utility blade and cut the excess paper off.

Almost looks like a built-in!

To prevent the wood from splitting when I nailed the backing into the bookcases, I drilled a small hole for each nail. Once the first nail was in place, I made sure it was level with a 24-inch level, drilled a pilot hole and hammered it in. One nail in each corner with an additional nail in the middle of each long side (6 total nails per bookcase) ensured I can remove the wood and change the backing if I want to.
I absolutely love how it looks now and I can push my books all the way to the back without them going to the wall. This also allows me to keep my books as far forward as possible. I don't know if that makes any sense to anyone but me.

My next post will be about the French memo/vision boards I made that are customized to my cousin and my styles perfectly. Please feel free to comment or ask me any questions!

In the beginning...

Ok, so this is not literally the beginning for me. I've been playing with tools and figuring out how to fix things and make my own creations for a while now. 

That's what this blog is going to be all about, because let's face it, most of us don't know what the hell we're doing. This is just going to be my personal slant on how I figure out how to do things, from cooking to crafting to fixing appliances. I'm also going to share things that I've learned along the way that keep my outlook positive, such as practicing mindfulness and guided meditation.

I've got projects that I'd been working on while figuring out if I wanted to start this blog, so there will be a few pictures along with upcoming posts.