"If it's worth doing, it's worth over-doing" as the Mythbusters are fond of saying. I planned for 4 standards/columns but probably could have gotten away with three. It avoids having to run the pipes through the wood as in other designs, which I feel adds a lot of unnecessary complication and work. The horizontal supports in the studs also share the load of the books with the vertical pipe standards, which also help keep the shelves level - I feel this is an extremely strong design that way, and after finishing wouldn't hesitate to line every shelf full of books. I strongly recommend planning your design around securing the shelves to the studs! Given that I'm using 2x10 boards with a lot of strength, this design worked out to be very solid. Our stud spacing is 16" on center, so I chose to create four standards (the vertical supports) and thus four horizontal supports for each shelf, three of which were secured to the studs. It's pretty typical to support bookshelves at least every 3 feet. In planning for the spacing and height of everything, I also considered the light switch, outlet and vent cover on the wall. This allowed for a bit of space on each end - I didn't want to have them bump up against the wall, but have a gap all the way around. My shelves ended up being 113" in length for the 5 shorter shelves, and 156" in length for the longest. So, we decided to do 6 total shelves along the wall, with 5 of them from the wall to the doorway and the top shelf going over the top of the doorway. Our wall in our living room is a little over 13 feet in length with a doorway into other rooms. ![]() Additionally, I ended up adding a few joist braces in our basement to ensure that the full weight of the shelves and books wouldn't harm our house - this is not something you will necessarily need to do, but it doesn't hurt to consider it. I spent quite a bit of time planning this project to ensure that it would look great and also be strong enough to hold all of our books. ![]() Scrap wood about 5' or 6' in length, 2x4s are bestġ/4" allen wrench Step 1: Plan Your Design ![]() Wall fasteners - these 5/16" togglers are great I used 6x 10-foot sections of their 3/4" galvanized pipe with some remainder.Ī variety of fittings for pipe - will vary with your wall, here's what I needed Pipe - SteelTek pipe and fittings from Lowe's are what I settled on. I'm linking to what I used, but you don't have to use these specific items.
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