Chelone's post inspired me to share something: we have almost no books in our house. (awaiting the gasps of horror!!) We recently donated most of what we will not read or use again to our local library. We make weekly trips to the library and are very well read, but you wouldn't necessarily know it to look at our house LOL. I was tired of dusting, storing, and caring for something that really could be enjoyed by other people. We also donated most of our DVDs. It was very liberating and freed up a lot of storage space for us. Now I have a small collection of cookbooks in the dining room, some computer language reference books in the office, and just one or two beloved fiction anthologies in the bedroom. Not a solution for everyone, but it really helped reduce the clutter in our house. It also saves a lot of money on purchases that may only be used/read once or twice. My shelves are only about 25% books, and 75% storage (baskets and boxes storing our camera, computer cords, greeting cards, sheet music, extra reeds, decorative dishes, and photos.)

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)?

This is exactly what I did here in my office. The Billy bookcases fit perfectly, and the cost was WAY less than if I had custom-built them myself. Mine are black/brown, with two extension units on top that make them 9' high. In order to attach them to the wall, I added a horizontal piece under the top shelf of the main unit and screwed them to the wall like you'd attach a kitchen cabinet ... if that makes any sense. Ikea supplies L brackets for this, but I felt more secure doing it a more traditional way. I still have to trim out the bottoms. I have to cut and customize those pieces so I can extend the a/c vents in the floor, and I just haven't done it yet. I needed a little more width on the right hand side of this corner to make the shelves balance on each side of the window. We attached a CD rack between the two units to give us the extra width ... and a place to put our CDs. Hopefully, these photos show what you're looking for. Connie Here is a link that might be useful: house and garden blog

Sometimes you just have to be creative and think outside of the box in order to get the look that you really want. Sure the billy bookcases are a bit shallow, but they aren't the only book cases available at Ikea and Ikea will give you the best bang for your buck. ALL of these built ins are IKEA, all the diyer did was add trim and mouldings to the fronts to cover the seams. Some are modern in style, others more traditional but the billies aren't just "bookcases", they come with a lot of options, like glass doors. Several of these actually look like they were professionally done.