Can We Build It? Yes We Can!

This is Bob the Builder. His slogan (way before a certain presidential candidate entered the scene, might I add) is "Yes We Can!" I've always thought that was such a great message to bring to kids. That you can do anything if you put your mind to it.

For Christmas, Landon and I received a combined total of 21 books. Yeah, we're THOSE people. I had two bookshelves before we got married that I brought with me. My parents also gave us two particle board bookshelves from the old playroom in their basement. We bought a large bookshelf from IKEA about a year ago. But already we were bursting at the seams, disguising books as decorations in our living room, bedroom and kitchen; stacking them on top of already full shelves in other rooms, stashing them in baskets where possible. But the 21 books we received for Christmas were just not going to fit.

Luckily for us, Landon also received some power tools for Christmas (thanks Mom and Dad)! So, using the good old Bob the Builder mindset, we decided that we would build our own furniture, in the hopes we could find a place for our overabundance of books without breaking the bank.

After Landon drew up a plan we thought could work, his Dad took him to the BYU-Idaho wood shop to cut the wood that we purchased at BMC West for $25. Landon assembled it in our kitchen a few days later with his new drill. As much to our surprise as yours, I am sure, everything fit together perfectly and no one got hurt in the process!

Everything was going so well, we decided to add some embellishments to the sides to make it our own. We designed something we liked on the computer, and punched holes along the outline into some craft tin. We had a ton of fun picking out the designs we were going to use, although our thumbs hurt pretty bad by the time we were done punching the holes.

Landon finished building it, and we tested it out. It worked! We were pretty excited about all of this.

We left it like that for a couple of weeks, because we got busy with life. But a few nights ago, we finally completed the last stages: staining and varnishing! Here is the final result:

 

 

What do you think? Our room definitely looks a lot better. We're pretty proud of our self-sufficiency. There is something so satisfying about building something from scratch, or taking something old and sad and making it beautiful. We just might have caught the DIY bug!