A DIY makeover for my bookshelves

And hopefully a slightly more interesting post than that title sounds!

In our study (aka my craft room) we have two Billy bookcases and two of those shelves are devoted to my collections of Good Food and Olive magazines which are growing. The oldest magazine dates back to 2003, a year after we bought this house and clearly when my recipe know-how was starting to fade a bit...

And with so many magazines, it was getting hard to keep them upright so I had a plan.

I headed off to the big orange DIY store clutching my measurements and managed to get there on a day when the big cutting machine was working. Handing over the sizes I wanted cut I waited for the man to do his stuff and left with lots of smaller bits of MDF!

Back home I got to work to insert the cut MDF as uprights

installing uprights

Even though my measuring - and the cutting - was accurate, there were some variations between the space and the MDF upright, so I added some draught excluder to the top of the MDF to help wedge it in place.

filling the gap

This worked well and ensured the uprights stood firm, and I took a moment to work out what to do next.

CONTEMPLATING MY NEXT MOVE

CONTEMPLATING MY NEXT MOVE

uprights installed

That was to carry on and repeat this for the second shelf before putting the magazines back in place.  I've left the MDF unfinished and unpainted as it's already a close match to the colour of the unit, and I think it works well.

With the uprights in place, there was only one thing left to do - and that was to step back and admire my morning's work.

magazines back on the shelf

It looks like there's enough space for my subscriptions to carry on for a little while yet!