When I first moved in with my husband a few years ago he was using a pair of small black bookshelves as his night stands. They eventually got moved out into the hall when we got new ones. And there they sat at the top of the stairs for a couple of years, doing their job of holding books but not looking very pretty while doing it.

I got the idea of putting them in my craft closet for extra storage. But one side of the closet was wider than the other and only one of them fit. I really didn’t want to have to buy new bookcases just because of one inch so I decided to pull one apart and put it back together in a way that would make fit.

It came apart pretty easily , I just had to use a flat head screwdriver to pry them apart a little.

The sides of the bookcases were originally connected to the outside of the top and bottom. When I put them back together I connected them to the inner surface of the top and bottom, gaining about an inch. Which was exactly what I needed.

I removed all the dowels and plastic pieces that had held the two together. I decided to use screws to put this thing back together instead of the dowels. The sides were already full of holes and if I were to use the dowels I would have to drill even more holes turning this thing into swiss cheese.

Three sides were rather easy to put back together with hubby’s help (well actually he did most of the work, I just held it for him). But for the top I leaned it against the wall to temporarily hold it together while I put the screws in. I did this part myself since hubby was on caster duty with the other bookcase.

We marked the holes where the casters were going to go. The screws were so small and the caster wheel was in the way making it hard to screw them in. So I made a small hole on the surface with the screw by tapping it lightly with a hammer.

After that it was really easy to install them.

 

After with my experience with painting the craft closet shelves and the paint chipping off, I got myself a really good primer. I’ve seen this Zinsser primer being used all over online, so I decided to give it a try.

The Kmart near our house is closing and everything is marked down. I got this guy for only $6 and it’s no VOC, which is an added bonus.

I’ve never used this stuff before, but I got the feeling that it was really old. I shook it and stirred it up as best I could but it ended being the consistency of sour cream. I’m not sure if that’s normal (I guess I’ll find out the next time I buy some), but it worked great. It had great coverage and I only had to give it two coats. Best of all, no peeling!

After that was dry I gave it and the shelves a couple of coats of white paint.

These guys only came with one shelf, which wasn’t going to help me much. Me the planner that I am, had two shelves cut when I originally bought the MDF for the closet.

The holes there on the sides are pretty much universal. All I had to do was buy a couple of sets of metal shelf holders at Home Depot to hold the new shelves in place.

A few IKEA storage boxes later and I was done!

Yep, that’s my cat’s butt on the side there. She was driving me crazy jumping in and out of my photos, so I just tried to shoot around her.

I think by the bewildered look on her face, she just realized that she photo bombed my pic.

Oh well!

Of course, it’s not really completely finished. I still have to organize it better, add some labels to the boxes and fill in the holes on the side of the reassembled shelf. But at least for now I have rolling storage on either side of the wall to store all my crafting goodies.