DIY Ikea Billy Built Ins
Using Ikea Billy bookcases, here is how you can make an Ikea built in hack for your own space. See how we set it up in our playroom design for the One Room Challenge!
Week 2 of the One Room Challenge is already here. Yowza.
Listen, I love good Ikea hacks, but I also really love when you can just pull something from there out of the box and not have to hack it or mess with it at all.
Or very minimally.
This is exactly what this project was for us! While there are tons of SERIOUSLY amazing Billy bookcase hacks out there to be seen, we didn’t even have to do a whole ton to make these look totally custom built.
We installed the same hardwood floors that are in the rest of our house and I LOVE them.
For reference, they’re 9″ white pine engineered hardwoods and I just want to hug them every time I see them.
Which is rare because there’s usually just crap all over them all the time, but I digress. Here’s how we made these built in bookcases all from Ikea furniture!
Custom Built In Shelves from Ikea
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- IKEA Billy Bookcases
- IKEA Trofast unit
- Cabinet screws
- Impact driver (This is our favorite impact driver we use)
- Caulk
- 1x12x6 pine board for Billy bookcase
- 1x10x8 pine board for Trofast unit
- Kreg jig
- Pocket hole screws
- Pre-stain wood conditioner
- Stain color of your choice (we used Golden Oak stain)
- Optional: Peel and stick decals (we used these U shaped decals)
The entire reason we chose to go with the Billy bookcase and the Trofast unit is because when I measured out the wall, 4 Billy bookcases and 1 Trofast LITERALLY fit like a glove. I was in utter disbelief.
See what I mean?? This was our “dry fit” to make sure it was going to work. Holy moly. Looks like a giant custom media center.
All I had done here is put all the units together and slid them in place. You can still see the shelves aren’t in and they’re sitting on top of the Billy bookcases.
Because we did want these to feel more custom since we had no plans to paint them, I found these really cute U shaped decals and decided to put these on the back side of the bookcases.
At 36 weeks pregnant, I didn’t have the energy to paint these bookcases a cute custom color and quite honestly didn’t have the budget to do wallpaper on the back side of these.
I’m not sure if you guys have looked around, but wallpaper is dang expensive.
Using these cabinet screws, we screwed the Billy units to one another and then screwed them into the Trofast unit that sits under the window.
You can see the reason we chose the 1 1/4″ size of those screws was so they would screw into one another without coming out of the other side.
Once everything was anchored to the wall and then screwed together, it’s time to cut and stain the boards for the top.
I didn’t get a photo of this step because your measurements will vary depending on how many units you use, whether or not you have a window separating things, how much overhang you want on either side, etc.
If you look closely, you can see that because of the way the top of the bookcase is designed, it makes the DIY wood top not sit totally flush.
Don’t fret, my pet – super easy solution!
Caulk! Ta da!
So easy even a (really really) pregnant chick can do it!
Now you can see that it looks way cleaner and whatnot.
From farther back, you can’t really even tell there’s caulk there! I love love it.
If you’re wondering what the boards look like up close, here they are. On the right side photo, you’ll see the 2 boards joined together on the Trofast unit.
We joined these with a Kreg Jig and pocket hole screws, very similarly to how we made Charlotte’s little DIY desk in a dormer we did towards the end of last year when things with online virtual school were new and poppin’.
If you look closely, I snuck some blocks in that Trofast unit trying to test out what kind of storage we would be working with, but I must say that this Ikea Billy “hack” is a show stopper.
Fun fact: This is actually the first room in our house that I’ve designed COMPLETELY on my own (besides the girls’ room) and Jordan saw it once this was all finished and he said, “Man, that wall really does look incredible”.
Duh. I know.
Kidding sort of. But if you decide to do something like this, I want to wish you good luck! It’s SO EASY! I could see this also working in a living room or basement too to create a giant custom look media center of sorts.
