bookshelves – library wall in progress

Today I finally got started on my bookshelf wall or library wall as some may say.

Two Saturday’s ago the kiddos spent the day with cousins, so Beast and I had a date night.  It was sort of unplanned so we winged it.  When he asked what I wanted to do, my first response was ….thrift shop! I had a little dresser in my mind to live next to my new wingback headboard.  I came up short in that regard, but I did score these two lovely bookcases.  They were marked $24 each, but it was 50% off all yellow tags that day, so I scored both of these bookcases for only $12 each.  And they came with six solid wood shelves each!  They are solid wood, not MDF, and so sturdy with two fixed shelves and the rest adjustable.  They complete what I needed to make a full wall of bookcases that I’ve been dreaming about.

In March I wrote this post about my desire to put bookshelves on this wall and started to collect the materials.  This is the wall…

This stack of MDF has traveled around my house for a long time waiting for the rest of the supplies to build these shelves.  Finally, they get to do their job.

I used my handy craig pocket hole jig again to fasten the top and bottom shelves. Since I typically work alone I come up with creative ways to hold my materials while fastening.  Since MDF is kinda flimsy I made two additional shelves permanent to give the box more stability. I built right on sight so didn’t have haul these things.

This stack of crown moulding I got from my neighbor who just did a major remodel of her entire first floor.     At some point I picked up this stack of wood 1 x12’s for $4 at the habitat for humanity. They were about 5′ long so I was able to get two shelves out of each one. One heck of a deal since each one would’ve been about $12 each at Home Depot.  Plus they’re already primed!

One of the best things about finding these two shelf units at the thrift is the width of each shelf unit was decided for me.  I was laboring over whether I should make all the shelves the same width or if I should do some wider some narrower.  So they’re coming together…and for penny’s y’all.  I had the wood for the three narrow units for years from my mom’s house actually,  I got the wider units for a total of $24, the crown was free, I had all the fasteners I needed already, and caulk.  Next up …

• lattice trim for the joint between the shelf units
• picture moulding to go across the top of the shelf units below the crown.
• base board
• a few more shelves on the narrow units
• paint
• booksI can’t wait to finish up and get all my books in one place!