I wish I could tell you that the library was smooth sailing after I dramatically picked a paint. Some things went well. I was able to cut my shelves without too much issue. I installed the brackets that I had and made a simple plan to start the others. I had plenty of MDF to cut the shelves and a little leftover for errors.
The paint went on smoother than I expected for a cheap gallon and I even had enough to cover the ceiling too. Here’s a free tip for you. While it’s a small room, there are quite a few shelves that must be covered so I painted everything except the ceiling first to be sure I had enough, that way if I had to get a little extra I could be sure I wasn’t dealing with blending a mismatch since this was an “oops” paint to begin with. I love Oops paint and it’s a great way to keep a project budget friendly but you do run the risk that it might not be exactly a match so blend carefully.
So the walls and ceiling are painted. I squeezed in a $0 temporary light upgrade (more on this soon) and I’m ready for my next step: Install and reinforce shelves. If you’re keeping up with the budget I had to buy a few extra supplies and spent another $11 so my $0 budget has crept up to $26. Ouch.
But let’s back up. My shelves are simply 3/4 inch MDF that I cut down to size. I dry fit them before the paint to get my size and spacing correct (see the first picture for that messy process), then drenched everything with paint. Would it have been easier to paint the wall without the brackets jutting out? Absolutely but I had to fight a few of these brackets so this order allowed be to fix my mistakes and cover with paint. You have to pick your “hard” in every project.
After giving the shelves some time to cure, it was time to put them in place. I loved it. I just sat up here and looked at these shelves dreaming about filling them with all our books. Reading for hours and hours. But reality was about to set in.
You see, as I finally got to the point where I decided to share the library, I encountered a huge problem. A problem so big that it won’t be functional unless I fix it. Ouch. Let’s back up a bit to see how we got here…
Maybe I shouldn’t admit that I knew it was going to happen. I knew I wasn’t doing this part 100% correctly and I planned to address it at this stage. While I was pretty sure this was going to be the issue, I didn’t know how badly it would be so I let it play out the easy way first so I could fix it later. This is not Carpentry 101. I have an advanced degree in “figure it out as I go,” and that does’t always work in my favor.
The short story is the side supports are not strong enough to hold the weight. I’m limited on how I can install them because there are no studs in that section of wall and I knew this. I tried a few hacks to get them more secure but they didn’t work. Bottomline: over time the bottom two shelves are going to dump all of our books out in the floor and most likely do some damage to the walls in the process. That’s a whole other “ouch.”
I guess I had hoped it would just need a little extra reinforcement here and there not an advanced engineering solution. I can see the final product down to tiny little details (including a vintage picture of George Washington... all the details!) but I’ve got to take the right steps to get there. All the steps of the process are important. So I took a long pause at the “reinforce shelves” step.
Am I a little discouraged, absolutely. Do I wish I would have planned a little better for this? Yes and no. I kind of think I would be here no matter how I did it so now I have a very clear picture of what is not working and that is worth a lot.
I took some time weighing all the options to see what might be best and spoiler alert, I finally figured it out. But in true transparency I seriously considered the option of quitting at that point but I was really too far in.
I’ll get there. And you’ll get there too. If you think projects always go perfectly it’s time to step away from HGTV magic and get your hands dirty. Part of the journey is figuring it out. No house is perfect. DIY is an art not a science. We can do this. And it’s also ok to press pause to be sure you’re doing things right. It’s also ok to figure it out as you go. We’ll get there… eventually.
(I really did figure it out and have an update coming soon! Thankfully I didn't publish in real time so you didn't have to wait a long as I did!
Budget Checkin:
Paint $15
Extra supplies $11
Total: $26
