Another week went by while we worked on office finishes. Yesterday, we trimmed out our library bookcases! It is a rather straight-forward task but really gave the bookcase a built-in look.
Boy have we slaved for these books! Not to to mention moving cross country with all the books, just to make room for this whole wall built-in, we had to reverse a closet and moving the door way. Now the framing and floor work have completed, trimming around these bookcases became the first and foremost of finishing the room.
I have made baseboard drawers for these cases to put the space underneath into a good use. To do so, we bought an extra matching bookcase so the grain and finishes match. While most of the shelves were turned into the drawer fronts and sides, the sides and the backing of the bookcases were saved to trim the space between and above the cases.
We cut the sides a bit narrower to create two long panels, which cover the space above the bookcases. Strips of 2″x4″s were attached to the ceiling (drilled into the ceiling joints above) for the panels to grab onto.
The panels were screwed onto the wood strips and plastic cap were used to hide the screw heads:
To cover the space between the bookcases, I ripped the backing of the extra bookcase to narrow strips on a table saw:
The strips of backing were glued onto the sides of neighboring cases. Each space in between cases took two strips, which blended in quite well.
The outside of the built-ins have ~3 5/8″ space to each side of the wall, we also covered them with the backing strips. We worked late into Saturday night and this morning, I was greeted by this beauty:
Instead of a blank wall, this is now the view when you walk into our front door:
To give you an idea of the living space, this is now the view of the office from our living room sofa. You can see our bedroom door at the end of the small hallway.
We are hanging the french doors this coming weekend, which should be the last immediate task for office finishes. It has been two whole months since we started the office renovation and it feels so good to be so close to the finish line! We do plan to paint and upgrade the trims and baseboards in the office. But these tasks have to wait until we finish all the wood floors, which is a big task we are tackling when Spring comes around. At the mean time, we will be busy with plenty of outdoor projects, aka preparing the backyard for planting!
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