Faux Built-Ins

We rent our home.  It's a lovely place, small, but very nice with a big backyard and a garage.  Until we outgrow our present home, we will be sticking around... and since I like it here and dread the thought of moving, I am trying desperately to keep us from outgrowing our present home.

I took a trip to IKEA last fall.  It was amazing.  It's the closest thing I've found to heaven on Earth.  It's over two hours from where I live, but so worth it.  But I digress... I went for bookshelves.  And bookshelves, I found.

I bought three bookshelves and took the home to the husband.  He loves a project so he got started right away...

IKEA makes a great instruction manual... for realsies, you have to check it out.  The hubster put together all three of the bookcases and then we attached them together.  We used some big ol' screws to do it.  I'm pretty sure that's what real-life carpenters call them, big ol' screws.  We attached them so that the bookcase in the middle was sticking out just a bit, like so:

I found some amazing fabric at Jo-Ann's Fabric, and at half-off, too!  I used a little spray adhesive and adhered it to the backing of the bookcases and called it done.  The fabric isn't easy to see, but it's textured and all pretty-like.

And it was done!

We put the shelves in it and loaded it with books.  Which was great, because we had several boxes of books taking up space in the garage.  I love it when a plan comes together.

It turned out so great, and it's made up of three separate bookcases! So simple!

**I apologize once again for the ridiculous awful-ness of these pictures.  Don't worry though-- thanks to my favorite little tax deductions, we're getting a little tax refund with which we have decided to buy a new camera! Hooray!