Tag: bookcases

Chronicling my adventures restoring and updating a quirky old Philadelphia rowhouse

One Room Challenge Week 3: How I Built the Bookcases

This is kind of a first for me, making my own built-in cabinets, even though what I’m doing isn’t that complicated. The first step was making a sketch. Although my drawing isn’t very good, it shows how every board fits together and how the whole thing fits into the drywall niche. I started with the…
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One Room Challenge Week 2: The Right Niche is Too Low!

I jumped the gun on this project a little – and now I’m glad I did. We have too many travel plans for our own good this fall, I have a lot of DIY work to do, and some other jobs were harder to coordinate than I would have expected. First, I came to grips…
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Start with the rug

My mom told me that she did this wrong. She got rugs last and then scrupulously searched for rugs whose every hint of color matched what was already in the room. Worse, she roped me into helping with this. So I’ve thought the bedroom needed a rug, and it seems like a good place to…
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An Irishman in the Suburbs

Remember that project to turn my room at my parents’ house into my dad’s office? Yep, they got him to help. Now you might be wondering what they were thinking after all I went through. Are they totally out of their minds? Maybe, but maybe it made sense. They sold the desk and wanted a counter that…
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The Bookcases Are Looking Like Something

I wasted no time getting them set up – doors back on and books in the house. Now it looks like someone lives here, in a non-messy way. At least at this corner. Then as soon as I got it looking like this I took everything out of the base cabinets and drilled about 10…
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Hooray for Irish Labor!

Yep, I finally got someone to come work for me again! Remember how I abandoned cutting down the bookcases? This cut was me and my dad working together with a cutting fence. He freehanded all his cuts!   Remember the too deep before? Now, they’re much more gracefully proportioned! And even more importantly, that hump in…
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