Ikea Billy short bookcase

Okay so I have a wall with some bookcases on it and  clearly I need more shelves but I also want to keep the short bookcase in the middle as kind of a display area. Also I would love for them to all look the same.

The problem is, I do not have room for 3 bookcases without covering up a light switch. If I just had an extra 4 inches I could squeeze them all in. Now Ikea does sell a slimmer one but... (I often wonder what's the point, I mean I am sure it has its place but 15 inches is just not big enough.) Anyway I think it would just look odd.

So the plan is to make the short full width bookcase that Ikea sells a little skinnier. But after purchasing it I wonder why I didn't just buy a full size and only fill the bottom half with shelves. I would still have to make it skinnier but for the price and future movability it would have been the smarter move. Always second guessing things after it is done and cannot be returned! Or maybe It will just have to be version 2, oh well. Better luck next time 🤨? This is why I never get anything done!

But I digress, back to the plan! After measuring and then sitting on it for a day or two I measured again and realized I was off by almost 2 inches. Thankfully I had not made any cuts yet, but now I am mostly absolutely positive maybe that I need to take about 4 inches off the width of the bookcase. Maths is hard! Oh that made me remember the book I read Humble Pi, It's good and funny.

Yeah so... back to it... again. This is where I am currently with the project but I'll update this post and maybe add some pictures of the process once I'm done.

===== Update 6/??/2024 =====

So it's finnaly done! I finish the bookcase months ago but it has a wonkyness to it I'm sure one of my angles are off by a fraction of a degree causing it to skew just right jutting out one of the top corners by about a quarter to half an inch. I know not a big deal, but it is; it could be better. The second issue was the getting the shelves to fit right and drilling the holes for the Ikea shelf "pegs" on the shorter shelf planks. Which is what took so long, as I wanted to make sure they were square (eventhough the bookcase is awry) and I didn't have the equipment to do it and apparently I was having a difficult time asking a "friend" to use their table saw (I swear I don't have social issues). Anyway it's done, I wish I had done things differently, but I guess we can't know everything before we start a project.

Doorbell Chime

Back in May of 2009 we decided to repaint our living room. In the process I removed the doorbell cover and chime. No big loss, I didn't really miss it (in fact we kind of regret having a doorbell at times now), but it did leave some wire's hanging out of the wall. I finally decided we needed to do something about the wires. Sure I could just reinstall the old one; everything worked, but I've never liked the whole look of a plastic box sticking out of the wall (If something goes on a wall it should be decorative or functional.) While, the doorbell cover is marginally functional (it covers the ugly chime,) it doesn't do anything but sit there and detract from the rest of the decor in the room. On the other hand a thermostat while it can be ugly it displays the temperature and allows me to control my environment (functional.) It was decided that our new doorbell chime should be decorative as well as functional.

The process of finding anything decorative my wife and I agree on is a lengthy and often stressful one. But along and alas we finally picked a new chime, the Craftmade Hand Carved Scroll Design Chime in Matte Black - (CH1515-BK.). After it arrived and we opened it up to take a look. It has real glass with an Tea stained/frost to it and the whole thing is very solid. After holding it up in place we decided it would look really awesome if it had a light in it, (considering it looks like an old time lantern.) I said, "Sure I can do that."

The Living room

So that was it! We finally had it. Enough with the boring bone white walls, yucky carpet that covered the entire front room and dining room. Yes I said dining room. Really why would you put carpet in a dining room? With kids let alone adults it's insane to keep clean. Anyway Catherine and I decided it was finally time to redo the main floor of our townhouse.