Gave our dining room a facelift and made some custom built-in bookshelves

Progress Photos Basically, my wife has an ungodly amount of books and needed a nice way to store them. That was convenient, because I needed an excuse to buy a bunch of new tools. Materials Every part of the shelves that has any structural value is made of 3/4" birch plywood. I ordered about 5 sheets' worth (4'x8') and had the hardware store cut them for me so I could minimize having to rip the plywood lengthwise - I don't have a table saw but I do have a miter saw. The face frame was made from a couple types of wood - I wasn't particular about this because the plan was to paint it from the beginning. I just avoided anything with a really pronounced grain so that the paint would effectively hide any differences. The paint is "doeskin" from sherwin williams in their emerald urethane Process I started with some level bases made of common lumber on the floor, used some 3" screws to secure them to studs. Then I measured and cut the vertical support pieces, then used my router to cut 1/4" dados into them to support the shelves along with a bunch of wood glue. The backs of the shelves were cut to the exact shape required using a flush trim bit on my router. I had to use an outlet extender to bring the outlet on the right shelf forward, but that was a lot easier than I anticipated and looks pretty good. Each shelf has a piece of pre-cut trim I bought from home depot glued to the front so none of the plywood sides are visible. I used The biggest challenge, easily, was the long shelf connecting the two on top. No corner in a home is truly square, and in my house there's some pretty wonky stuff going on. The whole thing is two equal-length pieces of plywood that meet in the middle. I hid 3 metal L brackets connected to studs above the window by attaching them to the bottoms of those pieces of plywood then cutting a length of 1/4" plywood to cover that whole section seamlessly. There were a few points where I wanted to throw in the towel here, but my wife was insistent that it would be worth it and she was definitely right. The other challenge was scribing the pieces of the face frame that visibly connect to the walls on the sides - I've never done scribing so I went through a lot of wasted pieces before I got my bearings. Once I got it to less than 1/8" gaps along the entire wall, caulk was more than enough to cover up any discrepancies. Price The plywood was about $500. I probably could have finished it with a little less, but definitely at least $400 worth of it made it into the finished product, and having extra made me less nervous about screwing things up. The rest of the trim, the paint, and any other finishing touches probably cost another $400 or so. No need to get into how much I spent on tools. Overall I'm really pleased with the end result. This was my first ever "built-in" piece and while it was a huge challenge, I really loved the process and learned a lot for my next project. submitted by /u/Kimbernator [link] [comments]

Mar 16, 2025 - 01:49

Basically, my wife has an ungodly amount of books and needed a nice way to store them. That was convenient, because I needed an excuse to buy a bunch of new tools.

Materials

Every part of the shelves that has any structural value is made of 3/4" birch plywood. I ordered about 5 sheets' worth (4'x8') and had the hardware store cut them for me so I could minimize having to rip the plywood lengthwise - I don't have a table saw but I do have a miter saw. The face frame was made from a couple types of wood - I wasn't particular about this because the plan was to paint it from the beginning. I just avoided anything with a really pronounced grain so that the paint would effectively hide any differences. The paint is "doeskin" from sherwin williams in their emerald urethane

Process

I started with some level bases made of common lumber on the floor, used some 3" screws to secure them to studs. Then I measured and cut the vertical support pieces, then used my router to cut 1/4" dados into them to support the shelves along with a bunch of wood glue. The backs of the shelves were cut to the exact shape required using a flush trim bit on my router. I had to use an outlet extender to bring the outlet on the right shelf forward, but that was a lot easier than I anticipated and looks pretty good. Each shelf has a piece of pre-cut trim I bought from home depot glued to the front so none of the plywood sides are visible. I used

The biggest challenge, easily, was the long shelf connecting the two on top. No corner in a home is truly square, and in my house there's some pretty wonky stuff going on. The whole thing is two equal-length pieces of plywood that meet in the middle. I hid 3 metal L brackets connected to studs above the window by attaching them to the bottoms of those pieces of plywood then cutting a length of 1/4" plywood to cover that whole section seamlessly. There were a few points where I wanted to throw in the towel here, but my wife was insistent that it would be worth it and she was definitely right.

The other challenge was scribing the pieces of the face frame that visibly connect to the walls on the sides - I've never done scribing so I went through a lot of wasted pieces before I got my bearings. Once I got it to less than 1/8" gaps along the entire wall, caulk was more than enough to cover up any discrepancies.

Price

The plywood was about $500. I probably could have finished it with a little less, but definitely at least $400 worth of it made it into the finished product, and having extra made me less nervous about screwing things up. The rest of the trim, the paint, and any other finishing touches probably cost another $400 or so. No need to get into how much I spent on tools.

Overall I'm really pleased with the end result. This was my first ever "built-in" piece and while it was a huge challenge, I really loved the process and learned a lot for my next project.

submitted by /u/Kimbernator
[link] [comments]