Dear Diary... How to Install Built In Bookshelves on a Budget

I promised to keep my posts short and will do my best on this one but it's a multi-step project so bear with me!

I've wanted to add built in bookcases since the day we bought our house and finally, one year later, that day came. I was so excited after months of searching for something that would fit the size & budget of our project.

For us, we wound up purchasing 90" kitchen cabinet boxes from Ikea and we then trimmed and moulded the crap out of them!

Here's the breakdown:
Four 90" x 14" x 24" cabinet "boxes" from Ikea
10 packs of shelves (they come two shelves to a pack)
Four packs of legs from Ikea
One 2x2 to use as "blocking" behind the baseboards & crown moulding
Flat pre-finished 1 x 6" boards (find with the moulding) so it matched the crown moulding
Approx 20 ft of crown & base moulding
Quarter Round trim
Flat panel moulding (not shown below)
Eight Door Mirrors
Caulking (3 tubes)

Time: Approx 1 weekend (2 days)

After assembling the cabinets we used these large washers combined with screws and anchors (not shown) to fix them to the walls. They're very tall and you definitely don't want to worry about them toppling over from the kiddos climbing up them! (Not that I would know from experience...)
**Make sure you level the cabinets before screwing in place! The legs were awesome at helping with this!

Here's a pic of the hubs, aren't I a lucky girl?

 Wood blocking & the 1"x6" pre-finished boards in place.
(We did the same step for the base boards)

 I wanted to add mirror for reflection to help make the room feel bigger again after we had impeded 14" into the living room for the depth of the bookcases. They also help to reflect more light into the room which was a great bonus. My mom had the great idea of using those mirrors that are usually hung on the back of a door (super cheap during back to school/college dorm season!) and just removing the frames. We used two per bookcase, they slightly overlapped but by the time I get my books & tchotchkes added it should mostly hide the seams. You can also opt for custom cut glass but it was about 5x the cost so I decided to go this route.

Bub needed a new place to house his toys and lo & behold those economy diaper boxes were a perfect fit for the bottom shelves! I used some scrap fabric to cover 4 of them! #WIN

Here is the nearly finished result, we just have to finish caulking and add the flat vertical trim between each bookcase/wall.

If you found this tutorial helpful or just enjoyed the read, please let me know by leaving a comment!

Yours truly,
The Decorating Diva