Or even better, books were the pages are glued together. - nosoccermom Oh yeah! Years ago Spouse and I stayed at the only hotel in a small market town in East Anglia in England. The ground floor of the hotel had a combination dining room-parlor-pub-lounge area, part of which had built-in bookcases filled with old leather bound books, the kind with fancy gilt on the spines. Being a huge reader and book lover, I was sipping my pint while scanning the shelves, and saw a book I wanted to examine further. When I removed it from the shelf, it was more like 2/3 of a book. The shelves were extremely shallow, so the hotel proprietors had cut down the books to fit the shelves! And by "cut down" I mean sawed off!

Is1208, your picture of only a part of this room makes it look as if all your furniture is clustered toward the left wall, as if it was important to leave the right third empty for traffic to pass through, and perhaps also to keep a wide diagonal path clear from top right to bottom left too. That suggested appearance in your picture may not be the case, but is suggesting the problem with that wall--it's not just empty, it's located in in empty space. The room is out of balance, with the left 2/3 furnished for living, the right waiting for the passengers to disembark and head for their luggage. The group of pictures does a lot in its little way to throw some weight on the other side. But it just seems to me that more indication of actual living on the right would really benefit the feel of the whole room. It's not a small room, it shouldn't live small. Having people arc around furniture as they pass through a room is fine. Even nice, desirable. A chest would likely be, as suggested, something your family ended up using a lot. A settee maybe not so much, but it might be even more valuable in making your living room appear to live large--the same way a bench invitingly placed by a lawn but seldom sat on makes a lawn look so much more appealing than one without it. I'm also wondering if that is a front or back door and how it might be influencing the throwing of all living to the left? If a back door, could it exit from the living area instead of being walled off so resolutely? If it's the front "stranger" entry, it's more problematic, but still--do you have a lot of strangers entering that way? Enough to cause the seating group to huddle to the side and try to ignore it? Yes, I'm really suspecting the actual situation is probably entirely different. Maybe someone's nearsighted and it's really about the TV. :) But that is what it's looking like from my side of the screen.

Cloud Swift - We came to the same conclusion as you regarding support. The unfinished pine we selected will basically be 9in depth and we have 2 bookcases (36in and 30in). So that spans 66in and we had just 67 inches. I am hoping the finish trim will take care of the rest. BTW, we did check out IKEA Billy and really liked the height extender and it seemed to be a good option as it had all sorts of other accessories like doors, bookends, lights etc. The depth was 11in and we felt 9in will give us a more builtin look as our recess was exactly that. We also wanted to maximize the seating there. I would have done Billy other wise. For price/ value, can't beat IKEA. As it is less than 10mi for me, it is sort of hard to avoid the temptation :)

You could build shelves in a stairwell https://www.pinterest.com/pin/528891549974717015/ around each window and door frame and around the top of the wall of each room above window height next to the ceiling. http://topotushka.com/marvelous-interior-and-exterior-designs-on-ceiling-bookshelf/ceiling-bookshelf-unique-on-interior-and-exterior-designs-intended-for-bookcases-ceilings-reading-nooks-spaces-8/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/329396160216860642/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/276619602084864857/