The Bookshelf…Finally!

Remember months ago when we talked about the built-in bookshelf that we were building in S’s room?  That feels like a year ago, but it was really only November. I am trying to forget how flaky most of our posts around that time made us seem. We had a bad habit of spreading ourselves a little too thin, but that is all part of the learning process, I suppose.

The built-in idea was sound, but the execution took some time. First, we needed to save money for a router. My mom sent us Christmas money for that purpose, so that problem was easily solved. Next, we had to practice using it. That was not so easy.

We quickly decided that routing was necessary for some of the project, but in order to play to our strengths, we should modify the design to require as little routing as possible. Andy actually got very skilled at using the router, but his cuts would have been completely reliant on my measurements, and I was having some accuracy issues. We just could not afford to make a lot of mistakes on this project. Wood is expensive.

I returned to my original pencil drawing and switched the routed shelves to adjustable track shelving instead. Honestly, in a child’s bedroom, that was a better choice for us. Our son’s books and belongings will change over time, and having the flexibility to change the shelving height will be a great benefit.

Andy and I moved right along on the project for a couple of weeks. Then, we ran out of wood because we made a purchasing error. The project came to a screeching halt.  In March, when we had the flexible funds for household projects, we bought more wood. Once the wood was purchased, we spent one more day fitting the vertical pieces of wood. That is when we discovered the entire unit was sagging, and all of our vertical measurements were off. We officially declared that we were on a break. (It wasn’t you bookshelf. It was us.)

During our long Memorial Day work weekend, Andy declared that the break was over. He was able to correct all of our vertical wood pieces, and he stabilized the unit with some wooden support feet. Andy’s language gets, how should I say this, “salty,” when he is doing home improvement. The kids try to cash in on this as much as possible.

Apparently, he ran into a few snags during that part of the bookshelf project because at the end of the weekend, Andy owed several dollars, and he declared that there would be “no more woodworking projects in this house EVER.” He was done, and “the bookshelf could not be finished. We were not good at these types of projects. We spent way too much money on this when we could have just bought a bookshelf.” I nodded sympathetically, but inside my head I thought, Challenge accepted.

Andy went back to work, and I went to work on the bookshelf. I spent several days stabilizing the unit and securing it to the ceiling. I used a combination of small corner braces and wood shims. I scavenged trim pieces from our basement to save money. During the week, I filled every crack with caulk and filled every countersunk screw with patch until it was time to prime, paint and add the shelving and track. I am happy to say that the bookshelf is done! It is not mostly done or almost done. It is 100% complete.


Andy and I made so many errors on this piece that I could not, in good conscience, consider sharing any sort of tutorial regarding creating a built-in bookshelf. That said, the bookshelf is solid and mostly square (ha!). We were able to fix all the issues related to both form and function. S. is thrilled with his new storage space.

It is hard to believe that the bedroom used to look like this:

And now it looks like this:


This was a tough project, but each new challenge helps us build new skills.