Corner Shelves for the Library, Finally

For most of the spring and early summer, we've been working outside at Chateau Papillon, putting together our gardens (both natural and vegetable), but the oppressive heat of the past few days--coupled with the work I got done inside while Beth was out of town, such as redoing the pantry shelves and installing some of the baseboards and trim--gave us the impetus to move the library one step closer to completion.

In designing and building the floor-to-ceiling shelves, I left space in the corners for transition units between the two walls. I'd debated butting the two sections against each other and perhaps crafting some "secret doors" into the hollow columns thus created, but in the end, decided 45-degree corner units would be the best use of space and would allow for additional book storage, photo display, and a place for some of the knick-knacks we've accumulated over the years.

Building the shelves began with the back support uprights; using the table saw, Beth and I cut 45-degree angles on the two sides, such that each upright panel would fit flush into the corner and provide support along the backs of the shelves themselves. I still had the drill template handy for the shelf peg holes (although it didn't line up perfectly left-to-right for the uprights--ah, well), and attaching the back uprights to the walls was fairly easily accomplished with several heavy duty wall anchors. I may eventually put in some really heavy-duty long screws through into the studs, but 6x 100-pound wall anchors should be more than sufficient for the duty--and there's really no way the support can collapse; the shelves, once in place, are wedged by the walls and the side shelving units; the back support is really there as a shelf peg holder.

The shelves were a tricky design; they're irregular hexagons, with a back edge (against the corner support) about 7 inches wide, a front edge of around 14 inches, and then two sets of sides (one set parallel to the shelves, one set parallel to the walls) of something like 11 and 16 inches, respectively.

Still, a table saw makes fairly quick work of this sort of carpentry; the hardest and most time-consuming part actually was attaching the facing strips of moulding to the shelves.

With the corner shelves in place, we've now got even more room to grow our library's collection; I also rearranged one of the main upright units to accommodate an extra shelf of paperbacks, which was dearly needed.

There's still plenty to do in the library; although the baseboards are all back in place, and all the shelves faced now, there's still the matter of the purple ceiling (no, that's not an intentional color choice on our part!) We intend to apply some false tin ceiling tiles for a classical look; it's just a matter of ordering them and doing the layout properly. After that, the crown moulding needs to go in along the tops of the shelves to complete their woodwork.

The closet still has a lot to do; at least with getting the corner units in place, we're able to clean out the stuff piled in the library closet so that I can pull up the carpet there and install bamboo flooring like the rest of the library. After that, we're debating how to finish it off; I'll put the closet door back on temporarily, but we want a fireplace (fake for now; perhaps gas logs in the future), and will put in some brick veneer for a nice hearth look... and perhaps a "secret" compartment behind the edge of the shelves where they meet the closet opening. Oh, and the antique claw-footed chair from my grandmother's house: it needs to be reupholstered; we've got the fabric, wood, and foam, but have not had the time yet.

And we have light fixtures to install; way back before we bought Chateau Papillon and were waiting out the bank for the short sale buy, Home Depot had a sale on chandeliers, so we've got a small one to put in over the library's seating area, and will also need some additional lighting at the other end.

With the corner shelves, though, we're one step closer to finishing the library!

The Library Is Almost Done!

A quick review of recent posts in the "renovation" category will show a lot of progress on our library at Chateau Papillon; from the first two shelving units to the extension to the second wall, I've covered a lot of our work to-date on adding that most critical of rooms to our home: the library.  I've been remiss of late, though, in posting what we've accomplished in nearly completing said home for books.

As you can see in the photo above, the shelves now wrap around three walls of the room; I need only to add the above-the-window shelves on the wall to the left in the photo (I need more 3/4" plywood for that) and to attach some facing strips to several shelves where I ran out of the proper moulding previously to finish most of the first phase.

I still of course need to put in place the crown moulding above the units; that's going to be a challenge but a do-able one.  Also, the corners need shelves; they've been left open and have pre-drilled peg holes on two sides, but they need some back support and the shelves themselves put into place.  Then the room needs light; I intend to put some wall sconces on the uprights on the far wall (directly ahead in the photo) and into the ceiling a small chandelier we picked up on sale at Home Depot.  Speaking of the ceiling: no, it's not staying lavender; we plan to put up some fake tin tiles rather than painting it, as from painting my home office I've had quite enough of that chore already.

We've still got room for one more set of shelves, but we need to pick up a bit more lumber (another sheet of 1/2" sanded ply plus another piece of 3" case moulding for the front)--and we need to touch up some of the pink left on the walls from where I had problems getting the closet doors down when we first painted.  As for the closet itself, we eventually plan a fake fireplace and perhaps a fish tank inside it, maybe curtained off from the library proper.

The library is a lot more spacious than the wide-angle photo above gives it credit; we've got room for a couple of cozy chairs near the fireplace-to-be, and certainly well over two thousand books with a bit of room to grow on.  If I wanted the "stacks" look, I suppose we could add another set of shelves down the center of the room, but I like the open feel even when surrounded by books--something we'd completely lose by creating aisles.

Beth wants a leopard-print rug for the floor.  Hmm.  Have to think about that one!

More Shelves, More Books ... Continued Library Work

I wanted to put together a quick post to cover some more of the work I've gotten done since Saturday for the library at Chateau Papillon.  The first wall's shelves are now pretty well loaded, and I've gotten the front case moulding in place.  I'd gotten the crown moulding set in place, measured, double-checked, checked again, test-fit, and then finally cut... but something seems to be off on the left edge (which should be a 22.5 degree inside angle--yes, crown is tougher to cut, but I double-checked it several times with test pieces).  Maybe it's fine; I kept thinking the piece that runs to the wall (visible at the top right) was wrong, but it's perfect.

Next, I've gotten a lot of the second wall done, too.  The first three standards are in place along with the two long shelves which finish framing the window; what's left is standard to the left which will create another slender unit (a couple of inches wider than the one on the right).  Then I'll cap the standards with the top board and install the face and crown moulding, too.  Last will be an extension on the HVAC duct, which will allow me to box it in tightly and put in a couple of shelves above it (right now, they'd get too hot in the winter without the extension).

There will be a corner unit between the two walls; the shelves are going to be a bit tricky to cut (with a 45 degree front face--and possibly the same in the back if I install a slender backer board in the corner itself).  But that's nothing compared to the crown moulding, whose ends meet at 22.5 degree inside "corners."  At nearly $2/foot, I can't risk many fouled-up cuts on that stuff!

Forgive the wide angle distortion in the above photo; however, it should give an idea of how the library's really coming along.  I've unpacked another four to five cartons of books--only somewhere north of 15 left (eek!), with many of those oddly-sized books which will shelve much less neatly.  Still, we've got the corner units to build, another slender unit to the left of the window framing, and two units up to the window on the third wall--and perhaps that window will be framed in, too.  The latter will necessitate more lumber, though; I'm down to two full sheets of plywood and cut sheets for another two standards and several shelves.

The Library Begins to Take Shape

Another weekend's work has begun on the library at Chateau Papillon, and it's really starting to take shape with the near-completion of the first set of shelves.  Despite another slap in the face by Mother Nature--this when I'm using FSC-certified lumber, no less--with her single-digit temperatures, I managed to wheel out the table saw and cut several more sets of shelves and began unpacking some books.


Though there's woodwork still to be done--puttying and sanding the nail and screw holes for the standards as well as the shelves (which are stabilized by a thin strip glued and nailed to their front edges) for one, then attaching decorative molding to the fronts of the standards and along the ceiling, and of course painting or staining the shelf units, too.  But I really wanted to get a sense of how they'd look and work with books on them, so after Beth and I got the last standard in place for the wall (the one to the far left), I worked on setting the shelves in place and unpacking.

I'm actually getting a bit worried we won't have enough shelving in the library for our books!  So far, I've unpacked nearly seven cartons of books, leaving well over twenty more cartons to go.  Worse, many of those remaining are hardcovers and irregularly-sized books, which won't store as neatly or densely as what I've gotten in place so far.  Count-wise, I probably have somewhere close to 400 mass-market paperbacks on the shelves, maybe 40 hardbacks, and somewhere south of 100 trade- and oddly-sized paperbacks.  That's not even a third of the books in our total collection (as it exists--remember, we need room to grow)--and these first three shelving units represent over 1/3 of the total space we'd intended to devote to shelves in the library as a whole.

I've still got room for perhaps two more cartons of books in the first three shelf units; I've got to cut several sheets of 3/4" plywood for heavier-duty hardcover shelves, though; the 1/2" shelves, even with a strip along the front for stability, just aren't up to full-time duty for that much weight.  That, and I need to go to the hardware store in search of more shelf pegs; for the hardcovers, I've come to prefer L-shaped metal pegs over the inline ones I've used for the most part so far.  That should free up enough wood for four more shelves in these units, and I expect to get the next two standards up tomorrow as well.  They'll give us a narrow unit to the right of the windows, as well as define a corner space which will need some tricky shelf-cutting to fill.

We've got enough wood on hand to run the shelves along the rest of the next wall and perhaps do one set of shelves on the third wall (I hope!), and I've got two large shelf units in my office on which I plan to keep my birding books and my various writing, photography, and desktop publishing references--and perhaps, if I have room, my mythology references as well.  Still, even assuming we use some of the older shelves we'd hoped to discard in various rooms of the house, it's going to be a tight squeeze to get all the books in.  Dare I go through and find a carton or two's worth of books I don't need, and give them to Goodwill?  Eek!

More Progress on the Library (And No Thanks to You, Mother Nature!)

The three-day weekend gave me a chance to work on the library; after drawing up the plans and getting the floor done last weekend, we took a 10% off coupon to Home Depot and picked up the lumber and miscellaneous hardware needed to build custom floor-to-ceiling shelves for our library.

First, we ripped several sheets of quality plywood into strips 11.5" wide and just under 8' tall; these would, with 1x4" boards sandwiched in-between, form the uprights for the shelf units.  In the photo above, you can see one of the uprights in nearly-finished form: the two sheets of plywood have been glued to the 1x4" boards (and then screwed together for good measure).  I've clamped in-place a piece of pegboard which I used as a guide to drill the holes for adjustable shelves; subsequently, using a drill bit with a "stop" bolted on to control its depth, will drill the two rows of holes, over 300 per upright in total.

After that, I screwed lag bolts into the bottoms of the uprights, then sawed off the bolt heads using a hacksaw.  These pegs nee bolts then fit into holes drilled into the floor, and after much work with a level to ensure the upright is plumb, it got bolted to the wall as well.

In the photo above, you can see an in-progress shot of the first wall of shelving.  Three of the uprights have been installed, creating two shelving units.  The thin strips screwed with apparent abandon to the fronts are there to stabilize the uprights and keep them in perfect position until the top (a 1/4" sheet of plywood) and crown moulding are in place, and until I have more anchors set into the walls to hold them.

The adjustable shelves should provide a good home for our home library; as seen in the photo, I set several of the completed shelves in place at heights to support mass market paperbacks, trade paperbacks, and hardcover books.  There's still a lot to do even just on the first wall: one more upright to set in place, some tweaks to make sure all the units are perfectly square to each other, and, of course, the trim.  Each unit's front is faced with some fancy (and priced as such, unfortunately) moulding to conceal the plywood "sandwich," for starters.  And the nail and screw holes have to be puttied and sanded, and the wood finished, though we haven't decided whether to go with paint or stain yet, or what shade of either.

I'd perhaps been a bit ambitious in my scheduling in planning to have the first two walls done this weekend, but then, Mother Nature didn't help out much.  Though on Friday I did get several of the uprights and shelf boards ripped with the table saw, just after I'd gotten set up on Saturday and done a bit of sanding--I hadn't even gotten to use the table saw to do any work on cutting shelves to width or on trim--the skies opened up, first with sleet, then the same bone-chilling rain we've seen for the past couple of weeks off and on.  Enough rain, already!

We got the tarp on the table saw and brought the other tools in; I had to hand-dry several to keep out rust (and I only hope I got all the moisture!)  The table saw had to wait under the tarp for the rain to let up a bit, then it got dried off and wheeled to the shed.  All told, Mother Nature gave us a day's set-back in construction!  That, mind you, after I'd bought FSC-certified wood for the "green" aspect of our library construction; she's got no shame, apparently.

Well, hopefully this next weekend will give us a chance to finish the first wall of shelves and do some unpacking of the books; we need the space in the library to store the rest of the wood.

Progress on the Library

One thing we really looked forward to during our entire house hunt and particularly after we found (and then bought) Chateau Papillon was building a library.  I've got nearly 2,000 books (a collection which grows daily at times, it seems), and ever since moving to northern Virginia, most have had to live in cardboard boxes.  Beth has several hundred more herself; I haven't inventoried hers yet, though.

In Blacksburg, I built a set of custom bookcases for my loft, sized for the loft's rear knee wall (just over six feet high--the roof slanted down across it) and for my books (with special shelves 12" deep, and several at perfect heights for paperbacks and others for hardcovers, and yet others for various oversized books).  Even with those, plus my two large bookcases and seven (yes, seven!) smaller 4' tall shelf units, I was even then starting to see book "crowding."

So for Chateau Papillon, we planned to build floor-to-ceiling shelving, making a true library for all those books.  Before moving in, we got the painting done in the library--a nice teal color--though I did leave the ceiling still lavender (I tired of ceiling painting pretty quickly after my home office), with plans to put up tin ceiling tiles instead.  But that's where the library has been for weeks now.


Finally, today I got to work on reflooring the library.  Like the master bedroom and my home office, there had been a lot of damage to the original hardwood floors: paint spills by a former owner or tenant, and many staple and nail holes from the carpet which had been there under the prior owner's tenure.  No problem; we'd ordered enough bamboo to cover all three of those rooms.  I just hadn't had time yet to tackle the library.

The floors are (almost) done now; I've only a few specially-cut strips along the entry side of the room to install.  See those stacks of boxes in the background?  Those are our books, aside from a couple of cartons at the very top.  Between these boxes and a few of cookbooks in the basement, all told there are just under 40 cartons of books awaiting their shelves!

I've got Friday off next week, so I plan to get to work on doing the first two walls' worth of shelves (along the entry wall, where I stood to take this photo; and along the right-hand wall to the window, below it, and then up the other side).  More to come... it will be nice to get those books unpacked!