Bookshelf design and materials

[Joe Johnson MI]

I'm pretty new at attempting projects, so really want to take my time and do this right. My office has no bookshelves right now - at least not to speak of. Our house has a lot of mahogany stained doors, stairs and banister. I doubt that there's any real mahogany, but the color matches the Min Wax Red Mahogany stain pretty well.

The house has been restored, so my office is basically a room with finished walls and floor, but not much else going on. We have ten foot ceilings, which gives me a lot to work with. I think I'd like to run the shelves up to around 8 to 8.5 feet, then top them off with a crown, leaving a shelf on top for decoration, lighting or other ideas. I'll also be building a desk and attempting to build in anything that will help me be more efficient. I spend between 20 and 40 hours here any given week, so I really want to be careful in considering my options and how the whole room will work. I have enough books to fill bookshelves around much of the room. Space isn't a huge issue, but I would like to have room to grow and avoid cluttered shelves. It would be nice to have a couple of pictures up too; looks matter, as I will be meeting with people here on occasion.

Mahogany is expensive. I'd love to use it. But I'm on a very tight budget and can't see being able to afford it unless someone was dumping some nearby for next to nothing. What would be my options for materials? It is possible that I could afford some strips of mahogany for the fronts and crown, but I still doubt it. And I don't now how hard it would be to stain them to match any other material I used anyway.

Also, does anyone have any advice on how to think through and design the layout? I have a basic idea, but would love some good ideas to make the space more aesthetically pleasing while gaining efficiency as well.

This is not a project that will get done soon or quickly. I'll have to do it in stages, most likely. I could make some time to do it, but certainly don't have the finances to do anything very soon, let alone very quickly.

So, basically, I have two questions. What material would be a good option to pursue in an effort to keep costs down, but still get a mahogany look? And, what advice does anyone have to help me with layout and design?

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

[Jamie Buxton]

Genuine mahogany is expensive, and the selection generally isn't broad. You might consider species sold as "African mahogany." There are a half-dozen species sold under this moniker. None of them is real mahogany. They're all supposed to look like real mahogany, but some are better than others. To my eye, Sipo comes closest. However, you'll probably have to just look at whatever is showing up in your dealers, and decide whether it looks close enough for you.

Another possibility is Lauan (aka Phillippine mahogany). It is even less like genuine than the African species, but it is less expensive.

In my dealers, genuine honduras mahogany is around $10 per board foot, and the African mahoganies are in the $6 area. That is, even African mahogany isn't cheap. Lauan is in the $4 area.

Staining the wood will help obscure the fact that you're not using real mahogany. The end result of the finishing process is more about the stain than the wood.

[Jamie Buxton]

If you have lots of books and a ten foot ceiling, you might consider a library ladder. You can get parts kits from http://www.cshardware.com/ladder_har...FQsQagodYlCDBw

[Joe Chritz]

This is 1/4 sawn red oak and oak plywood but you could easily do nearly all of it out of mahogany plywood.
The center sections are each 33 wide and 8 feet tall, 12 inches deep. The ends are 24" wide, 7 feet tall and 10" deep.

I inset metal shelf standards the full length for adjustable shelves.

Joe

[Joe Johnson MI]

That looks real nice Joe. I see where I could use some of what you've done. Have you posted these on the forum anywhere?

[Joe Chritz]

I don't think so but feel free to PM me with any specifics. It is pretty straight forward as far as the work. Just a case (although the exposed sides are panel) and face frames.

How's the winter treating you up there?

Joe

[Joe Johnson MI]

Jamie,

I've heard that lauan might be a good alternative. But I've also read that it really isn't, and isn't a great material - something about large pores. Have you had any experience with it? As for the ladder, it's beautiful, but I guess you didn't read the part about my budget...

How's the winter treating you up there?

Joe

Heh, not too bad. We only have about a foot of snow on the ground. It did rain yesterday and managed to ice up pretty good. But they take good care of the roads here, and we got a bit of snow today to soften things up. I don't expect we'll see above freezing again for a couple months.
I'm new to this whole yooper thing, coming from the SW about a year ago.

I might take you up on PMing you for ideas. Right now it's a matter of figuring out a general plan for my space here. I only want to do this once.


Ditat Deus
Joe

[Joe Johnson MI]

I'd like to get started, but I'm still working out some details and would appreciate some more advice. I have access to some free materials, so I'm trying to do this with as much of them as I can to keep costs down, and yet have a substantial look to the shelves. In other words, I want beer that looks and smells like champaign.

As has been noted, materials are expensive. But, a friend works at a sign company, and they use 1/8" luan (lauan) for stencils. They end up with about 14" cut offs, the full 8' of the board. I saw this design for floating shelves, which gave me some ideas with this luan. It's not mahogany, but should be very pretty if treated right. There is a light side and a dark side to most sheets, so hopefully I can match them up pretty well. One of my main concerns is that it's only 1/8". I could use more 1x, or double up on the luan, I suppose. They're nice light shelves, but seem like they'd be plenty strong. My idea is to build them without finishing the fronts, then trim them out later when I could afford some good solid pieces to work with. I could build the sides, shelves and tops using this method, and attach the shelves to the sides like they show them being attached to the wall. In the back I'd also put a sheet of luan, giving the shelves a more solid look. But I'd attach the shelves to the wall, through the luan.

The side pieces I plan on using 1x12 pine, with the luan glued to each side. I can get a lot of 1x for nothing, so it seems like a good option.
Would I be able to build this sort of frame with 1x2s and only 1/8" luan and expect it to last and remain stable? Should I double up the luan on top of each shelf for added strength?

Also, I have a corner that I don't know what to do with. Ideally I'll have the shelves go to the corner on both walls. But what's a good way to build shelves in corners, maintain good use of space (These are for books, but some decoration will be good), look nice, etc.?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thank you,

[Joe Chritz]

You could build the shelves as a torsion box and make them just about as big as you want and they would be plenty strong. You can make a torsion box from solid wood webs and for a shelf it should be fine since the amount of movement in the wood should be negligable and you aren't concerned about dead flat like an assembly table would be.

The latest wood magazine has a pretty simple modular shelving design you could likely modify to work with shelves made from torsion box construction.

Corners can be a lot of different things. I just went to the wall and left the adjacent wall empty but if you want to span the corner you will have to have some different design. Browse some pictures on the web of corner shelves and you will get some ideas.

FWIW, it is usually much more work and trouble to try to save a few 100 to make it not worth the effort. Especially for something that will be in the viewing eye all the time. This would be one of those lessons I learned through hands on training so to speak.

Joe

[Neal Clayton]

there's a shop here that specializes in custom trophy rooms, libraries, studies, gun display rooms, etc.

they have a ton of pictures on their website, would be a good start to go through them and get ideas for size and scale.

http://www.julianandsons.com