All My Bookcases Failed Me—Then I Found This IKEA Hack
Like many people, the first bookcase I ever bought was IKEA’s Billy bookcase. Affordable and simple to assemble, my Billy lasted for a few years before starting to look worse for wear (and eventually falling apart). When I moved to my current apartment almost seven years ago, I bought a new IKEA bookcase that I thought was my library's soulmate: the 35-inch Hemnes bookcase. It was sturdier than the Billy, made of solid pine instead of particle board, and still very affordable. (I loved Hemnes so much that I even wrote about how great it is!)
However, my husband and I are serious book lovers and over the years, even Hemnes didn’t hold up to the weight of our collection. I learned that not all solid wood is created equal: Pine is particularly soft, so the peg holes for the shelf supports eventually stretched so that the shelves got wobbly. Then, earlier this year, the bottom rung of our shelf split in two. (Readers: Don’t blame IKEA, it’s my fault, we crammed those books in and even loaded them up on top.) I ended up propping the whole thing up with... a can of soup. It was time to find a new bookcase, and I swore that I wouldn’t buy another IKEA bookcase.