Project: bookshelf with fabric backing

I am trying to organize and decorate the house. Progress is coming along slowly but surely. The books stacked on the floor in our bedroom needed a home and so I bought a Billy bookcase from IKEA. The white bookcases are about $20 cheaper than the other colors and so I went with white. But I wanted to spice it up a little and so I bought some fabric to cover the bookcase backing with. This was a test run: if it turned out well I was going to do the same thing to the bookcases I'm going to get for the home office.

(I took pictures of the process but I'm having trouble getting the slideshow to embed correctly. If you click on the image below, the slideshow will open in a new window.)


The Billy shelves from IKEA work well for this because they have a groove for the cardboard to slide into so you can't see it from the side. The first time I tried to slide in the cardboard after stapling around the edges, the fabric bunched up and it wouldn't fit. So I used spray adhesive to smooth out the fabric on the back and it worked a lot better. A couple of the staples do show through on the front, but they're hard to see. Next time I'm going to be sure to put all of the staples really close to the edge so they don't show.

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