One Room Challenge Week 3: How I Built the Bookcases

This is kind of a first for me, making my own built-in cabinets, even though what I’m doing isn’t that complicated. The first step was making a sketch. Although my drawing isn’t very good, it shows how every board fits together and how the whole thing fits into the drywall niche. I started with the drywall dimensions and worked my way down to every board. Remember what they taught us in high school science class. Don’t skip steps. I made the shelves entirely out of sanded plywood with wood nosings on the fronts. My dad has a radial arm saw that we used for all the rips and cross cuts and I don’t know what I would have done without it.

The baseboard runs straight across the whole wall, so first I had to add a plywood shelf that sits behind it. Off came the base cap and on went some wood blocks. I ran the drywall down to these blocks as you can see here. Also, after I took this not-so-good photo, I added another strip of wood to the back side of the baseboard to hold everything together.

Then I closed up Ninja’s space with a deep shelf. It still had some flex even with the wood I attached to the baseboard, so I added 2 little legs to the back. The base cap is just sitting there since we’re still fussing with the drywall. But after 5 years of imagining this bookcase, I had to see it with my own eyes.

The rest of the bookcase is going to sit on this shelf, so I didn’t want a base like normal bookcases have. Instead, I made the next shelf up fixed. This meant cutting a dado, or a quarter inch deep notch, into the vertical boards that make the sides of the bookcases. My dad owns a dado blade, which is basically 2 regular saw blades that attach together in a V shape that you can adjust to different widths. He told me to do a practice cut and I’m glad he did because the thing was super inaccurate at 3/4″ wide. Instead I set it narrower and did the dadoes in 2 passes.

Next were holes for the adjustable shelves. People say it’s best to do this with a drill press, but I just used masking tape on the drill bit. Note: the shelf I’m drilling is under the pegboard. The plywood on top is holding it down because the pegboard I used is old and warped. Also, the green tape on the drill bit is to prevent me from going all the way through. It would tear off or slide down over time though, so some of my holes did go through. I decided not to care since the outside won’t show.

Once this is done, Then we primed and sanded all the visible sides. (Then I sanded everything again without gloves so I could feel what I was doing.)

Now we basically have an IKEA kit. Except that we have to glue everything and decide where we’re driving screws in. (Also, that’s the Irishman cleaned up to go out, randomly helping us while his family waits.)

And… they fit! Big sigh. The next step was attaching them to the walls. Since nothing in this house is square, I made sure the front edge of the bookcase is set back the same distance from the drywall corner all the way around. There’s a little dead space in the back since this niche is about 2 inches deeper than the other one.

That just leaves the trim on the fronts that will finally make these look good. Before that can happen, we need to finish fussing with the drywall, and I want to go back to the suburbs and make the outer frame a little skinnier.

So, I’ll go over the final details of the nosings and face frames once they’re on. Now I’m wondering, is a really specific tutorial where I show exactly how I calculated the dimensions of all my boards useful to anyone? If so, I’m happy to write it.

And one more thing: You can find all the other participants in the One Room Challenge here.