Built-In Bookcase - Part 1

I've spent many an hour at the Barnes & Noble cafe sipping coffee while thumbing through books and magazines.  Before SB started school it was our weekly date.  We'd go to storytime then while away the morning with a snack and a stack of reading material.  We still manage to have a Barnes & Noble "date" on occasion.  Consequently, we have a houseful of books.

I've shown our family room wall of books & media here, and of course each of the boys has bookshelves in their bedrooms.  But we needed more bookspace, and I was tired of looking at the 70s jail cell bars that were separating my foyer from my living room.

Stupid bars separating my foyer from the LR behind my FIL

So a project was born.  I was hoping to have finished this over the weekend, but my brother was visiting with his newly-minted fiance(Yay! Finally!) and all construction work came to a grinding halt.  I actually took the recipocating saw to those bars a really long time ago, leaving a blank space over a half wall.

I punched a hole into the wall and shined a flashlight around to make sure that there weren't any wires or anything in there.

Then started the demolition process.  The studs were taken out very carefully with an oscillating multi-tool, so as not to damage the wall on the other side. 

At first I had only been planning on having a bookcase that was the width of the upper opening, but after staring at that hole for awhile, I decided to take the bookcase all the way to the wall, so as not to have a weird little corner space.

CG jumped in on the rebuilding process.  We're a team, and he likes building things.  Using construction adhesive, we attached a sheet of v-groove paneling to the existing drywall for the bookshelf back.  There were some wires along the left side, and instead of rerouting them, we planned to box them in.  For symmetry sake, we built a matching box out of 2x4's for the right side, too.

A 2x4 header attached with our Kreg Pocket Jig, and a sheet of Luan on top are starting to make this half wall look a bit more like a bookcase.  I wish I had a "tada!" after photo to share, but we'll try for next week.

Thanks for popping in and DIYing with me.