Handypanda
Jun. 13th, 2007 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bryantSo if you want pretty decent-looking shelving that is not the usual geek unfinished pine, here's one thing you can do. It has the advantage of being cheap; it's also handy if you have typical old Massachusetts house sloping floors which wind up making traditional bookshelves lean precariously into the room. I did not do this all by myself; ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cityofbeige was crucial for tool knowledge and actually doing about 75% of the work, and michele_blue suggested the idea in the first place.
First off, measurements. Find the studs in the wall on which you want the shelves. Mark and count 'em. Then figure out how high the wall is or at least how much vertical space you want for shelves. Us, we have a lot of books, so we went floor to ceiling. Your needs may differ. Then figure how how high your shelves need to be. Paperbacks will be around 8 inches -- 7 inches for the paperback, plus an inch or so of headroom. Add another inch or so for the shelves. If you're worried about your brackets getting in the way of the top of your books, add another inch. (You have to work in units of an inch for reasons which will become apparent later.) I kinda recommend drawing a little diagram to make sure you have it right. Don't forget to measure the horizontal space too.
OK, you have a diagram. Head over to Home Depot. Substitute in your preferred vendor for this kind of thing as necessary.
First off, buy a bunch of Rubbermaid double track shelving uprights. They're long pieces of metal with slots cut in 'em for putting in brackets. I'm sure someone other than Rubbermaid makes these, but Home Depot has Rubbermaid, so that's what we got. You'll want one per stud in your wall, for maximum support. No reason to skimp there. They come in white and black.
Then buy a bunch of Rubbermaid shelving brackets. We got 9" brackets to allow for 10" shelves, which is fine for double-shelving paperbacks. You want one per shelf per upright; we had six uprights and planned on eight shelves, so we bought 48 of 'em. It would have been nice to match the color of the uprights and shelves, but they didn't have enough black brackets and I really wanted black shelves, so I got white. Turned out to look pretty decent; the brackets are mostly hidden by the books anyhow. Again, I'm sure you can get brackets from other sources.
Finally, get shelves. You could go over and have 'em cut lumber to spec, or you can just get Rubbermaid shelving. Lumber would be kinda cool if you were planning on painting it. Rubbermaid does nice shelves in black, white, and some wood shades. The wood shades are cheesy and obviously, you know, not wood. Do the right thing if you want wood-looking shelves. We went austere and black.
They come in 8", 10", and 12" widths. They also come in 2', 3', 4', and 6' lengths. If you're doing long shelves, you can get a couple of shorter lengths to fit; we had seven feet of wall to work with, so we got 8 3' shelves and 8 4' shelves. This too will look just fine in practice.
Oh, and make sure you have a zillion or so 2-1/2" screws. They'll hold the uprights to the walls. Important component.
Bring everything home. The construction won't take as long as you think, don't worry. It's also not very hard.
You already know you want one upright per stud. Use a level to make sure they're straight up and down; you don't want them angling to either side. You also want to make a cursory pass at ensuring they're all at the same height vis a vis the wall. We just butted the bottom of each upright up against the baseboard; that worked fine. If you're not chewing up your full wall, measure from the top or the bottom of the wall for each upright and mark when you want the top and/or bottom to be.
Use your POWER DRILL to screw the uprights into the wall. Raar. It's easiest to do the previous step with two people, in which case you can do the top and bottom screws on each upright and then both of you can parallelize the screwing task. But it's not gonna take too long either way.
Then, well, slot the brackets into the appropriate place and put shelves on 'em and you're done.
The shelving before books go in it. You can tell there are two shelving pieces per shelf if you look closely.
Full of paperbacks! Not yet alphabetized. I'm not entirely thrilled with the bookends, but that can be fixed.
Or you can skip to the professional explanation, but you miss my pictures.
cityofbeige was crucial for tool knowledge and actually doing about 75% of the work, and michele_blue suggested the idea in the first place. First off, measurements. Find the studs in the wall on which you want the shelves. Mark and count 'em. Then figure out how high the wall is or at least how much vertical space you want for shelves. Us, we have a lot of books, so we went floor to ceiling. Your needs may differ. Then figure how how high your shelves need to be. Paperbacks will be around 8 inches -- 7 inches for the paperback, plus an inch or so of headroom. Add another inch or so for the shelves. If you're worried about your brackets getting in the way of the top of your books, add another inch. (You have to work in units of an inch for reasons which will become apparent later.) I kinda recommend drawing a little diagram to make sure you have it right. Don't forget to measure the horizontal space too.
OK, you have a diagram. Head over to Home Depot. Substitute in your preferred vendor for this kind of thing as necessary.
First off, buy a bunch of Rubbermaid double track shelving uprights. They're long pieces of metal with slots cut in 'em for putting in brackets. I'm sure someone other than Rubbermaid makes these, but Home Depot has Rubbermaid, so that's what we got. You'll want one per stud in your wall, for maximum support. No reason to skimp there. They come in white and black.
Then buy a bunch of Rubbermaid shelving brackets. We got 9" brackets to allow for 10" shelves, which is fine for double-shelving paperbacks. You want one per shelf per upright; we had six uprights and planned on eight shelves, so we bought 48 of 'em. It would have been nice to match the color of the uprights and shelves, but they didn't have enough black brackets and I really wanted black shelves, so I got white. Turned out to look pretty decent; the brackets are mostly hidden by the books anyhow. Again, I'm sure you can get brackets from other sources.
Finally, get shelves. You could go over and have 'em cut lumber to spec, or you can just get Rubbermaid shelving. Lumber would be kinda cool if you were planning on painting it. Rubbermaid does nice shelves in black, white, and some wood shades. The wood shades are cheesy and obviously, you know, not wood. Do the right thing if you want wood-looking shelves. We went austere and black.
They come in 8", 10", and 12" widths. They also come in 2', 3', 4', and 6' lengths. If you're doing long shelves, you can get a couple of shorter lengths to fit; we had seven feet of wall to work with, so we got 8 3' shelves and 8 4' shelves. This too will look just fine in practice.
Oh, and make sure you have a zillion or so 2-1/2" screws. They'll hold the uprights to the walls. Important component.
Bring everything home. The construction won't take as long as you think, don't worry. It's also not very hard.
You already know you want one upright per stud. Use a level to make sure they're straight up and down; you don't want them angling to either side. You also want to make a cursory pass at ensuring they're all at the same height vis a vis the wall. We just butted the bottom of each upright up against the baseboard; that worked fine. If you're not chewing up your full wall, measure from the top or the bottom of the wall for each upright and mark when you want the top and/or bottom to be.
Use your POWER DRILL to screw the uprights into the wall. Raar. It's easiest to do the previous step with two people, in which case you can do the top and bottom screws on each upright and then both of you can parallelize the screwing task. But it's not gonna take too long either way.
Then, well, slot the brackets into the appropriate place and put shelves on 'em and you're done.
The shelving before books go in it. You can tell there are two shelving pieces per shelf if you look closely.
Full of paperbacks! Not yet alphabetized. I'm not entirely thrilled with the bookends, but that can be fixed.
Or you can skip to the professional explanation, but you miss my pictures.
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 03:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 04:51 pm (UTC)In either case we can't do so right now. I don't trust anchoring thing in the crumbly plaster of our 200 year old walls and the building tilts like a Tim Burton movie.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 04:54 pm (UTC)Crumbly plaster should be OK, as long as you get the studs, though. You could probably use anchors to hold the screws if necessary.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 06:37 pm (UTC)Where the 4' and 3' segments join, are they at all connected? Or is it that some of the 4' get to set on the bracket whereas some of the 3' get it instead? I imagine it's more relevant to the 3' that they get the bracket than the 4' segment.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 06:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 11:20 pm (UTC)