Built-in bookcase: Episode 4

I feel like I keep saying the bookcase is almost finished.  And then it's not.  So this time, I will just say that it's in a state the one *might* consider finished.  There's certainly still some things about it that I'd like to change eventually, but the most important thing is that it's fully painted and performing its intended function - which is much more than I've been able to say about it for the last two months!

And once again, I have the husband of a friend to thank for helping out (shout-out to Alex Jude!).  I've been on pause with this for a week or so because once the painting was done and dried, I started trying to put all the shelves back up, and ran into some issues because the new coat of paint made some of the shelves a little wonky when trying to fit them back in.  Alex came over with his sander to help shave down the sides, but after we had done the very first one of them, we discovered that all the rest of them worked just fine with no sanding.  Cue my shame at having dragged him over to my house to help out :( 

Here's the old girl in all her freshly white-painted glory (as with all of my pictures, just try to ignore the clutter):

Hooray!  And just because I feel like the most satisfying part of any home improvement blog post is the before and after, here's a little slideshow of the bookcase painting project from beginning to (temporary) end:

I love how the white totally pops in these pictures!  I'll leave it like this for a while until the walls are painted (coming up early May, hopefully!).  Then once I see how that looks, I might decide to paint the back of the bookcase a nice orange-y accent color.  But for now, I'm just going to enjoy having this done and having all the books back where they're supposed to be.

If all goes as planned, future blog posts about the bookcase should include finding a way to hide all the cords, buying new hinges and re-hanging the cabinet doors, and maybe painting the back wall accent color.  Sigh...so much to do still!