IKEA Billy bookshelf hack

[Square Feet]

I thought I would post a pic of a Billy bookcase hack that I finished recently in case it is of interest to anyone.  The total cost was under £500 - £200 for the bookcases, then architrave, skirting, paint, facing strips, lights, caulk etc came to a bit under £300.  Billy's are pretty ugly on their own, but if you cover the edges up with proper wood then they don't look so bad. If I was doing this for my forever home I would use a solid wood bookcase like a Hemnes instead. 

 

The first job was to figure out how to get the bookcases to completely fill the wall recess that I wanted them to go in. This involved calculating how wide the spaces between the bookcases needed to be to work with the available Billy sizes, which are 400mm and 800mm wide. A lot of this was dictated by what facing stripwood I could get straight off the shelf without having to rip it down along the full length. It was a lot of headscratching and I had to make a spreadsheet in the end to figure it all out. 

 

I then moved the electrical socket outlet that was on that wall to the top of the bookcase so that it could be accessed after the bookcases were fitted.

 

I made up all the bookcases, screwing the shelves through from the sides and back to keep them from bending. This will mean they can't be moved about but I am fine with that. Billy's often look bad because the shelves go bendy and I wanted to avoid that.

 

I then took my time levelling the bookcases on a base of CLS framework, then screwed the bookcase units together with spacing strips in between so that the facing strips which covered the edges of the Billy's were the exact right width without needing cut down. The whole unit was secured to the wall with angle brackets.

 

I fitted CLS right around the outer edge of the bookcase unit to give the architrave something to fix to. I then cut strips to cover the front of the shelves and painted those, along with the vertical edge facing strips, architrave and skirting and then fitted them all. I did start filling in the unneeded shelf support holes with caulk, but it was a massive faff and didn't make it look that much better so I gave up on that. 

 

The lights were bathroom cabinet lights out of the B&Q bargain bin for £3 each but were much too cold with fixed leds, so I bought a piece of theatre lighting gel in orange for a couple of quid and cut wee discs to fit into the lights to warm them up. The lights are wired together and plug into a smart plug that is powered from the relocated socket at the top of the bookcase. You can't see it behind the architrave and the lights can be turned on by telling Google to 'turn the bookcase lights on'. A good party trick. 

 

Here's the finished article, with the 'before' pic at the bottom for context. I'm pretty pleased with it, given the cost. The edge facing strips give the impression that it has been made with solid chunky timber and the round edge shelf cover strips also hide the fact it is made with particleboard. 

I've done a wee bit of other decorating in the room too. 😉

 

 

 

Edited December 13, 2023 by Square Feet

[Kelvin]

Great effort well done. Looks really good. 

[joe90]

Looks really good well done 👍

[RandAbuild]

This is my Kallax IKEA hack. It's a 4x1 Kallax shelf, cut down to 3x1 (more difficult than it sounds), and then 90mm cut off the back to make it fit in the void in our sloping roof. Works very well - 5 years daily use and it's still as fresh as a daisy.

 

The small round thing on the left hand side is not a camera (!) but a light sensor for our LED floor flood light. For night time visits...

[Bozza]

@Square Feet nice job - looks great and high end -  seen a lot of this kind of thing on TikTok.  Something I’ve always wanted to ask though / discouraged me from doing something similar.  Close up is there not a mismatch between the materials , the shade and texture of the ikea manufactured and melamine -v-  the hand painted facing timber.   And I always worried the hand painted part would in time fade/yellow and contrast with the melamine ?

 

 

 

[Square Feet]

5 hours ago, Bozza said:

@Square Feet nice job - looks great and high end -  seen a lot of this kind of thing on TikTok.  Something I’ve always wanted to ask though / discouraged me from doing something similar.  Close up is there not a mismatch between the materials , the shade and texture of the ikea manufactured and melamine -v-  the hand painted facing timber.   And I always worried the hand painted part would in time fade/yellow and contrast with the melamine ?

 

 

 

It might I suppose, but it looks ok so far. It wouldn't be a big deal to freshen it up if it did start to look odd, but I think that would be many years off, if at all.