Ever since we moved in this house, I know I wanted to add built-ins flanking the fireplace downstairs. My friend and I made over the fireplace itself last July, so the space one each side was begging to be filled in and useful.

For the numerous people I have explained the whole process to by wildly waving my arms, I found out it’s hard to wrap a brain around. Here’s was the overall plan to make everything flush once its complete

Since phase one was the creating the fireplace face, we now had a flush area to butt the shelves up to. We started with the upper book cases, with two non-adjustable shelves and the bottom shelf resting on the ledge

Then we put the face of the book cases on, trimming everything out with 1×3 pine (hindsight, I could have/should have used more of a hardwood, -maybe in the next house:)

The lower section was built after that, creating a whole piece that was flush and square…mostly;)

We made some shaker doors from scratch, with a Kreg jig I got for my birthday (thanks Amanda!) It is so handy for making invisible joints and joining two flat boards together. We had to make functioning doors by code so the outlets were accessible. It also means we can have an outlet to add lighting to the shelves at a later date.

After attaching the doors and a half a can of white paint (plus three movie musicals to help  pass the time, here is where I took a break:

The next post is crown and base, a close-up of those gorgeous handles, and decorating!!