This is probably way too late, but if not....I was flipping the channels the other night (be so glad when the writer's strike is over) and came upon the last few minutes of HGTV's Color Splash, with that David guy. (He's very talented, but can only take so much of him.) The segment was "Dramatic Den Makeover" - (the number for the episode is HCLRS.304 and it will be aired again on January 28 at 8:30 ET. Anyhow, he transformed this space to a gorgeous libary setting. Took prefab bookcases and added crown molding and it was phenomenal! You might find it interesting.

I would go same distance on either side of doors (but adjust for outlets since it looks like you have tape going right over one, so equidistant from the edge of outlets may be better - no one will notice an inch difference from doors, but will notice an inch from one outlet and right against the cover of the other). As far as going to the ceiling, if you plan on these being "traditional" looking with base and crown molding, then yes, go to ceiling, have carpenter case out your door openings and trim windows too. But how would that look with the rest of your house? If you want to keep the house "modern" looking and don't have any trim except baseboard, then I would go with bookcases that don't have a lot of trim, either no trim at all if you end short of the ceiling, or very thin trim, flat or quarter round, where the cases meet the walls and ceilings. Ditto other posts about electrical (think of where you want TV and have drawers under for DVDs, have support for TV unless it's lightweight flat panel, and plan for depth required for TV. Some shallow drawers for DVDs/CDs, deep drawers for board games (if you don't want them to show), and shelves with bins/baskets for small toys would work best. I can't wait to see end result! I want to do the same thing on either side of my bay window, am thinking of shelves/window seat/storage under windows since when they put up sheetrock the corners got built out, my baseboard doesn't fit tight (and they cut 1 piece of baseboard too short anyway). Only thing is, we've already bought a loveseat that's there in the summer (will move in front of slider during winter, put tree in bay). Don't want to hijack the thread, but would like advice - try to fix walls and buy new baseboard, leave bay open, or do built-ins under the window and buy new baseboard to go in front of them (make sure front is flat even though walls are slightly bowed)?

The tv is currently on the opposite wall from the bookcase. This is our main room and right next to the kitchen, so a tv has to stay in this room. Probably getting a 65 inch. Yes, the one cabinet has wine glass holders there, but I don't think I want that set up as a bar there. The shelves above it used to have wine holder racks too, but I took that out. Ss a bar in the family room normal? This room is visible and centered fro the front door/foyer. (We had the sofa facing the fireplace when this picture was taken)

Oh, that looks lovely but unfortunately a bench is out since there is not enough width between the wall and a window for it to make sense (you can see the edge of the curtain in my picture above). It's also a difficult living room for furniture arrangement since there are two double width door openings, one from the hall then one from the dining room with sliding pocket doors. The third wall has the fireplace and built in bookcase and the fourth is almost all window (but no direct light unfortunately). The idea of a second bookcase, I agree, would add more symmetry to that wall but I'm imagining it will be on the expensive side and we're trying to keep this low budget (hence the idea to whitewash). If I understand correctly, you feel we can't whitewash without painting the bookcase and mantel and even then you feel we would need to add something (bookcase or bench) to the opposite side of the fireplace. One other idea we had was to leave the fireplace unpainted but add an oak board that we would stain the same color as the mantel to cover up the top three rows of bricks (including the vertical ones that stick out) making it less busy. I worry that even doing that, it won't be enough. Finally, what about adding a surround in wood? I'm supposing if we do that we would have to paint the mantel and bookcase a similar color, correct? And there would still be the problem of symmetry. I should mention that there is a lot of oak mouldings throughout the house. Some of these we have painted already as they were just too dark and with over 100 years of soot and dirt were going to be too difficult to clean. We did leave the mouldings of several of the doorframes and the pocket doors to the dining room in the natural oak. There are two built in oak china cabinets in the dining room which is why we were trying to preserve the oak bookcase. But the more I see pictures of painted bookcases, the more I'm tempted to paint ours. Here is something quite similar to ours. What do you think?