New member to this forum - here's my DIY shelving

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New member to this forum - here's my DIY shelving

1chrisrsprague
Ott 27, 2016, 3:22 pm

I thought I'd join this forum, as I'm always looking for new ideas, and my winter project this year will be to build 2 more of these, but not as two stand-alone cases, but instead as a single double-width case. It will go on the opposite wall, which is not broken up by pocket doors.

I actually built these last year - the first bookcase was completed in February, the second one took a bit longer for various reasons and was completed in June (both 2015).

Anyway, I constructed these out of 3/4" birch plywood (top, sides, back, and shelves) and solid maple (moulding, face frame, and shelf bracing).

The shelves are 3/4" birch ply with a pair of maple 1x2s rabbeted on, one on each side, for strength. I did all of the routing myself, including the decorative routing for the moulding pieces with a 1/2" Roman Ogee bit, mounted on a solid router table.

First, what was there before:


Drilling shelf pins with a Kreg jig:


Assembling the base:


Clamping and glueing the rabbet joints:


A close-up of the shelf construction. There is a rabbetted 1x2 on both the front and back of each shelf.


Here are all the shelves on the floor drying, which should give you a better idea:


To calculate how effective this would be I used the sagulator tool:
http://www.woodbin.com/calcs/sagulator/

Assembling the first frame (back in February):


Attaching moulding before final painting:


And skipping ahead a few months, here are both of the cases done, apart from moving it into place and letting the paint cure!


And finally, in place and full of books (they are even more full now, hence my plans to build two more):



By the way, for stability and to help prevent racking, the 4th shelf (5th row of books) is fixed, not floating, in spite of there being shelf pin holes all the way up.

Also, as for height - they are 94" tall. The idea is that should I ever want to remove them, I can tilt them forward without the top scraping the ceiling (the diagonol clears by about 1/4").

The shelf on the left has 43.5" shelf spans and an overall width of 48",the shelf on the right has 41.5" spans and an overall width of 46". It is narrower due to it having to clear a baseboard heater.

OK, that's all for my show and tell for now!

2omargosh
Ott 27, 2016, 4:03 pm

Welcome. The shelves look great!

32wonderY
Ott 27, 2016, 4:24 pm

Wow! Super nice!

4bluepiano
Modificato: Ott 27, 2016, 4:56 pm

My heart went out to you when I looked at the first photo without reading the caption, as I thought it showed the slightly wonky result of a DIY project. My admiration went out to you when I saw the bookcases you'd actually made; lordy, you must be proud of them.

(TIL words whose existence I'd never suspected. Rabbet, Kreg jig, sagulator. Hope our teacher doesn't ask us to use them in a sentence on the next pop quiz.)

5LyzzyBee
Ott 28, 2016, 3:05 am

Oh those are lovely! Well done on a fabulous project!

6SylviaC
Ott 28, 2016, 8:43 am

Those look gorgeous! I'm looking forward to seeing the next project when it's done.

7staffordcastle
Ott 31, 2016, 1:42 am

Lovely job!

8Marcial87
Nov 2, 2016, 8:51 pm

Good work- a vast improvement on the prior setup. How did you paint them?

9chrisrsprague
Nov 3, 2016, 8:28 am

>8 Marcial87: I used an oil-based paint (Benjamin Moore Impervo Alkyd) with a combination of a roller (for large sections) and a paint brush for the details. Primed with an oil-based primer. The tops of the shelves were sanded down between coats with 220 grit, and then finished with polishing pads and left to cure for 3 weeks before putting books on them.

I used oil paint because it does not get tacky in humid weather like latex does. It's a pain to work with, but it cures HARD. There won't be any paint sticking to the bottom of my books here, which is especially important as I have a lot of Folio Society, Easton Press, Franklin Library, and Limited Editions Club titles (far more than are pictured in the old pictures I posted above).

For the next set though, I think I'll only use oil for the top surfaces of the shelves, and use latex for the rest of the bookcase.

10chrisrsprague
Modificato: Lug 3, 2017, 10:35 am

Well, for those looking forward to seeing the next two bookcases, construction has begun. I will probably photo document this project to some extent as well, and share progress here.

These two will be place flush against each other, so there will be considerably less decorative moulding to produce. Just one side, and the faces. The trick will be making them perfectly square to each other, as any differences in tolerances will be glaringly obvious.

11SaintSunniva
Ago 28, 2017, 12:19 pm

>10 chrisrsprague: Now I'm wondering...about the oil paint just for the top of the shelves, so books won't stick if it's humid...what about the sides? Won't books possibly stick?

I think that's an excellent idea though, using oil-based for the parts that books may be resting on.

12chrisrsprague
Modificato: Giu 30, 2020, 1:40 pm

So, I got busy, lost motivation, was a little daunted by the scope of the project (it's one thing to lazily build 1 bookcase a year, quite another to build two at the exact same time).

In February I started working on this again, rabbetting the shelves, sanding, more sanding (even bought a pack of N95 masks that later became VERY useful to have around...), even started in on the priming and painting.

Then the pandemic hit, and while home full time, had to juggle my full time job and being kindergarten teacher to my daughter. Once again I had no energy or motivation.

Finally, school was out and my daughter was at outdoor summer day camp, and I had energy and motivation again. I have next to zero pictures of the thing in progress, but for what it's worth, here they are.

Note: I don't have a "before" picture, but it was the same sorry glued sawdust garbage that was against the other two walls in the posts above, only there were three of them pressed together side to side.

First, purchase and saw the lumber to width:


As with my first two bookcases, I double-rabbetted some maple 1x2s to the sanded birch plywood shelves, both to cover the plywood edge grain, and to add support to prevent sagging.




Then I had to sand the tops all smooth:


Not a bad joint for an amateur:


Now build the sides:


Not shown is the bit where I had to drill a total of 228 shelf pin holes (57*4), all needing to align exactly across all 4 side pieces. I used a Kreg shelf pin jig for this.

Checking for fitment. Looks good to me.


Paint, paint, paint. I did most of this upstairs as my cellar frequently falls a hair below 50 degrees in the winter, and paint tends to not like that.


Starting to put it together, and square everything up:



Standing it up:


Glueing and clamping on the baseboard moulding (which I cut and routed myself, using a 3/4" Roman Ogee bit):


All moulding attached, backboards screwed on, wall braces attached (5 of them, into studs with 4.5" lag bolts).


And voila!


13staffordcastle
Lug 19, 2020, 2:09 am

Bravo! They look wonderful!

14VonKar
Lug 19, 2020, 12:24 pm

Beautiful - well done !

15Eowyn1
Modificato: Lug 25, 2020, 5:13 pm

>4 bluepiano: Haha, same here Bluepiano!
They are lovelyl!

16SaintSunniva
Ago 8, 2020, 9:53 pm

Beautiful!

17DVanderlinde
Mag 16, 2021, 1:23 pm

Outstanding!