Adrian Ziemkowski's LiveJournal - I built Karen a bookshelf!

You can get a bit of an idea of what it looked like before. It used to be an opening to the room next to it, but a previous owner made a wall, but only had it flush to the small room, leaving a recess in the master bedroom... perfect for a bookshelf!



Rounded edges of course. The 45-degree corners are a nod to Battlestar: Galactica's cut corners theme.


I'm also replacing all the baseboards in the house. It makes the house look a bit messy, as you can tell on the right where the wall has no baseboards. I'm getting close to done, you can see all the corner pieces to the right of the chair. Once done, I'll caulk the tops and edges and grout the bottoms on the tile. Finally I'll seal all the grout in the house to give it that nice glossy look and to prevent discoloring or cracking. If only I had more time to do all this!


Working with power tools is quite satisfying, which in itself is rather relieving considering the amount of classical music and opera I listen to in the car! The garage is my work area:

The miter saw was essential because of the BSG corners, which required the round edges to match perfectly. Before this project, I used to cut baseboards with a handheld jig saw, which was not only laborious but subject to many more errors.

After all the pieces were in place, it was time to prime it. I thought that 6 shelves would be ideal and evenly spaced them. The stud finder I have for the baseboards was a great help because it also has a laser level, which was quite useful when aligning the mounts on the sides (which each have two heavy screws going into the studs of the frame), which you can see in the photos above.


After another coat of primer and two coats of high gloss (that I then let dry for two weeks to keep the books from sticking to it), it was ready to use:

(see it on Flickr with descriptive notes)

I was only allocated the top shelf (because Karen can't reach it!), but ended up also using the left half below the top and the left part above her shoes for text books. I'll probably thin down mine to at least one and a half rows. Karen has a lot more books at her parents' house still, so soon it will be completely full!