In 2017 I finally decided to build a shelf for all of my books.
After having to move them already two times – always ripping a lot of cardboard moving boxes – I wanted something mobile and decided to simply build boxes, they can stay in for next time.
I found a lot of solid beech-wood drawers from an old plan/drawing storing unit in a dumpster and after taking them apart and sanding and cutting down the slats I glued 4 of them together for each sheet. Then I went and got a lot of help and carpentry tips from my good friend Alexander Haid and we started to put them through the planer, 45°miter-cut them to size (40 x 31 cm) and added grooves to slide in a back wall out of 6 mm brown-coated plywood, which is normally used for concrete molding.
As the final wood-panels were only 11 mm thick and I needed biscuit joints for stability in the miter-corners, I decided to custom cut some with the laser cutter out of walnut wood and leaving them visible as a design feature.
As the biscuit joints were sticking out of the panels for the glueing, I also had to make some custom templates to be able to properly glue the boxes.
I also build 3 double sized boxes out of 18mm plywood… these are unfortunately very heavy without books in them already and I won’t be able to move them alone by myself 😉
I am pretty happy with the end result and having been able to re-purpose some old wood which definitely adds character to the boxes.
I love the flexibility and rearranging possibilities of that shelving system and I can easily add more boxes to it while I slowly enlarge my library… 🙂 (but only more small 40 x 40 x 31 cm ones)
I also started to add some custom inserts like drawers for DVDs and my CD-collection (yes, I am a kid of the 90ties, deal with it!).
How they handle moving I will find out in the future. Can’t tell anything about that yet….