Extreme Makeover: Blackberry Edition

A couple of weeks ago a piece fell off of my blackberry bold.  It's a little metal piece in between each row of keys, and mine had started randomly cracking as I typed.  When I went to the T-Mobile store, the guy there was amazed, and sure it was a manufacturer's defect.  Unfortunately when he called customer service, they still wanted to charge me $100 for a "warranty" exchange.  I'd get a new phone, but for $100.  That's better than the $130 insurance deductible to possibly get a refurbished phone, but still, $100 for cosmetic damage is a bit... excessive.

So I came home and decided to look up how to change the housing.  I see where people over at Crackberry.com do it all the time.  I've also seen it on some of the blogs that I follow.  (Check those out if you ever want awesome BB themes and wallpapers, mostly for free.)  So I went to YouTube, CrackBerry, and those blogs that I followed and did some research on how to do it, where to get the supplies, etc.  I settled on a white housing from SW Box.  They are in China so I wasn't expecting that the housing would be here for another week, but surprisingly, it came today.  i got mine with the keyboard, but if you want to keep the stock keyboard, you can order the housing without it.  Another important thing that I learned is that you want to buy a housing that has the sides and the top pice that says "blackberry" already pieced together.  If you don't you'll be sorry.  This is mine: 

 

So this is what TootsBerry looked like before: 

See the finished product after the jump:

And this is her after, front and back: 

 

And one of her in her OtterBox case: