IKEA Billy question

[GenevieveLenard]

Could someone measure the cut-out bit at the back where they sit over the skirting for me please? Our skirting is about 15cm and I can’t find the info in the instructions anywhere

This is a white Billy with glass doors

This is oak Billy with no doors, it appears they are the same

I'd go off the oak one because the white one is on carpet so the measurement would be slightly padded out.

I see now that it won't fit your skirting, it doesn't fit ours either but I'm not altogether bothered. Ours is only in a storage area and not really "on show" but I'll take a further away pic for you so you can see the effect with our old style high skirts.

You’re a superstar @Grizalda thanks! Now I’ve got time to get a wooden baton to secure them to the wall near the top. It will be quite visible, but in DD’s room so probably disguised by clutter before long!

Do they not come with something to secure it to the wall? I'm sure our ikea (not Billy though) bookcase came with something to seure it to the wall.

My tall Billy has an attachment at the top to hook it to the wall.

They definitely need securing, when I was putting ours in place I managed to bring it down on myself they really are death traps!

I’m planning an 80x202 wide Billy with the cd storage (Gnedsby? for paperback books before anyone’s mystified ) either side, so very wobbly I’m guessing, and I’m rubbish at DIY, and our house has those old, crap, wattle-and-daub type walls that just crumble....

So I was thinking of screwing them all to a thin bit of wood, then I can screw that into the excellent, correct-rawl-plug, holes drilled by a professional when the current floating shelves went up.

That’ll work, right?

It should do, best job is to give it a good rattle once it's up, if it doesn't move - you're good.

my strategy is first to fix the baton to the walls with your good rawl plugs. Then fix the Billy to the baton. Otherwise it will be v. hard to get things lined up right.

Yeah I’m a bit worried about that @parietal but I thought I’d have to screw through the baton into the sides of each piece?

We have loads of these bookcases in our games room. We don't have skirting boards but we have oak plinths which are chunky so the decorator cut pieces out of the bottoms of the bookcases with a jigsaw and they look really tidy.

We have batons on the wall too that they're secured to. Definitely worth it.

we have secured our billy bookcases with a metal L brackets and as they are also up against a tall skirting we have that gap, so the metal bracket is fixed to a wooden baton fixed to the top of the bookcase that bridges the gap

It means there are not so many holes in the wall!

Put bookcase in place, fix L bracket to end of baton, put baton on top of bookcase, mark front and sides of baton on top of bookcase AND mark where the holes are in the bracket on the wall

do all the drilling, just narrow guide holes for the baton to bookcase, and bigger ones with plugs for the walls, fix baton to case, then fix them to the wall!