Saturday, September 18, 2010

Bookshelves

Thirty years ago I had 2 small children and no shelves. I designed 2 bookshelves and my husband made them for us. They started out as shelves for the toys; they have been heavily used. Our daughter wants to make some now for her house of 2 small children so I'm posting this picture and some dimensions for her.
  • lip at the side and back top shelf is 1.5 inches
  • the side piece is 11 1/4" (the size the wood came) by 29"
  • The shelves are 11" apart
  • 41 inches long shelves
  • the bottom shelf is 3" off the floor.
  • The back is 3/4 inch plywood dadoed in. (Reaching behind the shelf it is smooth so I know that the shelves were trimmed to fit the back in. The back is also invisible from the side.)
  • The shelves are dadoed into the side boards.
If they had been made out of oak they would not have as many dings on the edges of the boards, they are made of pine. I can see that they need to be sanded and re-varnished but they have been absolutely the best shelves. Now one resides in the hallway with books, the other in the 'hotroom' (sunporch) with children's books still on it.
Thank-you, Roger, for building them!

3 comments:

Liz Johnston said...

Okay Dad is crazy.. little dadoes.. never even heard of that.. how do you do that?

Laurie said...

You cut a slot in the wood the width of the board and slide it in there. Then nail and glue or screw it to make it permanent. Normal people use a router; he used a dado head on the table saw.

Liz Johnston said...

two things we don't have.. table saw and a router..