At the beginning of last year, I moved back to Tartu. I bought an apartment that I renovated over 10 months. And part of that was the shelf I dreamt about before building the last one. For my second shelf, I took my time, saved money, and did some digging to find the right building blocks. Sadly, I don’t yet have the space and tools to build one from scratch. So I did some IKEA hacks and a lot of painting.
The Build
First there was a blank wall, some IKEA furniture, pieces of wood and a lot of paint …
I used kitchen cabinets as the base and painted the doors. On top of them came some wood paneling and two big IKEA shelves, one of them flipped on it’s head – for symmetry. I added a shelf above the window, some lights and trim around the whole shelf. I added an extendable kids bed as my sofa. It can be slid out and extended to be a guest bed. Or just stay like that for my mostly short friends






The other thing I had been dreaming about for a while was wooden indoor shutters, and as the shelf was going to be built around a window, here was my chance for them as well.


I painted the ‘sofa’ in the same colour as the shelf and added the crown molding. I loaded the shelf up with about 320 books. Around 70 more than when I last sorted and counted them at the beginning of 2021 for my shelf in Tallinn. But I also did read about 150 books in the three years between.
And there we have it – my built in shelf and sofa.

The System
If you are interested, my sorting system is as follows:




The alphabetically sorted Books and Cookies are in the cabinets, and the Lifestyle products are hidden behind my books.
The Next Shelf
There’s a saying in Estonia: the first house you build for your mother-in-law, the second house you build for your friend and the third house you build for yourself.
So that’s how I am tackling my apartments and bookshelves. I have had a soft start with a simple shelf, a lot more work with an IKEA hack, and the third will hopefully be built from scratch and perfectly fit the space it is in.