Living room built-in bookshelves and closets using BESTA shelves and PAX wardrobes

Materials: BESTA shelf and PAX wardrobe

Description: We had a largely unused wall in our living room and a mishmash of shelves and storage. We wanted something clean and integrated and a post of Centsational Girl provided the inspiration.

Our project took about 15-20 hours (a few hours here and there over the course of a week).

The space was 106″ long which was perfect for 2 – 39″ wide Pax wardrobes, 2 – 47″ wide BESTA shelves and 1 – 23″ wide BESTA shelf. We had to leave a little room because of the location of our return air grille.

We assembled the BESTA shelves first, and had to prop them up by about 4.5″ so that the 5.5″ baseboards we were using would just cover the bottom of the shelf. We built a base using 2x4s and 1x4s. The BESTA feet can be adjusted to level the shelves and provided a little bit of adjustability to get the height just right.

Then we assembled the PAX wardrobes. We used 1×6 material (which happens to be 5.5″ wide) to create a base and screwed that to the bottom of the PAX. This made it so the 5.5″ baseboards would perfectly fit underneath the doors, which cover the bottom of the pax. We also painted the flimsy backs of the PAX and BESTA units a light blue.

We screwed everything together and attached to the wall and added the baseboards.

See more of the Besta and Pax shelving.

~ Chris