A Jen Too Many

Might I brag just a little? I am so proud of this bookshelf I made for my daughters' room. We recently, finally!, got twin beds for both of them. We had a huge wooden bunkbed for the Oldest Girl Child and a toddler bed for Youngest Girl Child. You'd think we were all set for the move out of the toddler bed, but...

1. The bunkbed was one of those that had a full bed on the bottom and a twin on top, and it took up a huge percentage of the room and,

2. I realized that I just do not have the courage to put my little OGC onto a top bunk, as much as she would love to be there. I just knew she would fall off and break her arm or neck.

So I decided that I just couldn't live with anything but twin beds for the two of them.*

Two twin beds take up less space that that one bunkbed, which meant we had room for more furniture! Yay! Because we desperately needed a bookshelf in there. I was keeping their books in a big plastic bin, which just wasn't working. So off we went to the store, where there was a very nice sale on cheap bookcases.

Children were involved, however, which meant it wasn't fated to be that simple. They had fake wood-grain bookcases, they had black bookcases. They didn't have pink bookcases, or white bookcases. Which is what OGC decided she wanted. Pink, or white. Either one would work. Nothing else would do, and while the world wouldn't come to an end if she had to put up with something else, her little heart just might be broken into a million Humpty-Dumpty pieces.

Desperation / mother / invention. (You should have seen the way her little shoulders slumped and her head drooped! You'd have felt desperate, too.) I considered paint, I considered contact paper. I decided on fabric.

Now, when I say in the About Me section that I have too much fabric in the basement? So. Not. Kidding. As in I have not only 3, 4, 5, 6 yard lengths of fabric, but actual bolts of stuff I found cheaply** that I loved and decided I Must Have. I justify it by calling it my year's supply of fabric. My husband not only doesn't complain, I have fooled him into thinking I am very cool for my preparedness. (Don't read that bit, honey.)

So we picked up the wood-grain bookcase and headed back home to find the perfect fabric. Naturally, the fabric the girls loved, though, wasn't one of my bolts, it was a 2 yard length that I'd picked up thinking about Halloween costumes. So I got creative, and used three different fabrics. Pink and shiny to cover the shelves, 100% cotton floral to cover the sides, top and bottom, and blue floral flannel to cover the back.

I covered each piece separately, wrapping the fabric around, then using my staple gun to fasten it to the wood in the areas where it wouldn't show when everything was put together. (If you do this, make sure you pull the fabric tight, as tight as you can. Even as tight as I pulled it, I'm already having a slight problem with the fabric loosening on the shelves. Luckily I can pull those out and tighten it up prettily easily.)

Putting the bookcase together went pretty easily, except that the company had supplied evil plastic pegs to hold the sides and top/bottom together. When I lost control of all the various pieces had a crucial moment and they tipped over, the pegs snapped off. Whereupon I lost my temper and just used nails to hold everything together (covered later by flower stickers.)

Of course, in the end it made very little difference at all. Everything is all covered with books, and where there aren't books there are various treasures, like the Really Big Rock they dug up out of the back yard, but at least the sides look cute!
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*Luckily I have a very nice husband, who never, ever pointed out how very much money we had paid for the bunkbed when we bought it not long after OGC was born. A furniture store near us was having a going out of business sale. Which meant things were on sale, but still expensive.

**It's amazing what you can pick up at yard sales and the Walmart $1/yard table.