Bookshelves were always going to be an important piece of furniture for me, and I knew I didn't want bookcases - at least big ones, as my main book storage. A filled bookcase essentially moves your wall inwards by almost a foot.
You can get floating shelves or shelves with wall-attaching brackets. But the wall I'm going into here is a stud wall - i.e. plasterboard stapled onto criss-crossed joists. So I thought of having an uprights-and-brackets system.
It's a shelving system more familiar from retail outfitting and even garage storage than interior design. But there are some high-end companies making high-end versions of it. So I trust my design instincts haven't led me astray here and that the system will look stylish.
Towards that I've planned a kind of broken layout of shelving rather than straight runs.
A large part of my book collection is made up of paperbacks, not least my collection of children's books, so I decided mostly shallow shelves would serve me - and look the most stylish.
As for the location I decided the wall marked below would be the perfect spot. There's a sticky-out bit of wall (housing, I presume, some kind of stuctural beam) for shelves to tuck against, and it's a part of the room where other kinds of furniture wouldn't fit and wouldn't be needed - apart from a table, which I'll come to.
I've got a dropleaf table which with both leaves down is as narrow as the shelves, to tuck under the shelf arrangment.
The key element in making this all look good is the shelfboard material. I'm using plywood.
I mentioned I love the industrial touch of pratical materials being visible. There's a company in my area which cuts ply board to any size, and even better will lacquer it and even round of corners to a specified amount.
With my dad's help I finished getting up the uprights yesterday and have placed the board in a la my plan. I have yet to fix everything, but this is how it's going to look:
Pretty cool!
And to give you a better look at the rounded corners and how the table tucks away...
And the charm of the system is that it can be adjusted. If I find I can fit another shelf in I can order another. If I want to have a shelf below that lowest one I have some space bits of the upright bars I can attach for that.
Tomorrow all my stuff that's been in a storage locker for 3 years gets delivered, and that includes my books! So before long I should have pictures of these shelves filled...
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