Building a Bookcase

As many of you know I am a school teacher and a student.  I also love to read; my house is full of books of all kinds: animals, gardening, education, research, and fiction to name a just a few.  There is always a need for one more bookcase.

My husband is thrifty, and that is putting it mildly. Back in the fall, I decided I needed not one, but two new bookcases.  He did not want to spend big bucks for them so I went to Walmart.  I have used Walmart bookcases in my classroom for years for paperback books and other teacher storage needs and I have always had good service from them.  I got the two items and returned home to assemble them.

I positioned the new bookcases on opposite sides of my computer desk and loaded them.  In one I put office type supplies that had been piled up on my desk.  I love a clean surface.  In the other I put my college education books.  Many of these books are hardback and quite heavy.  I did put the biggest ones on the bottom.  Things were good for several months.

One afternoon I was working at the computer and BOOM!  Down came the top two shelves of my bookcase.  When I examined the shelves they were very bowed.  I guess the books were just too heavy for the particle board shelves.  I piled them up so that the path was clear.  Then Mother had her surgery and I have not gotten back to the problem until the past week.

My carpenter!

Mark, my spouse, said we could build a bookcase that would hold whatever I wanted to put on it.  Off we go to Home Depot for lumber and other sundry articles which were needed.  Now I like to work in the morning and my husband is a slow starter.  Needless to say, we got started later than I would have liked, but I don’t turn down help.

Mark also hates the heat, so he wanted to build the bookcases in the house.  To say that I put up a fuss is putting it very mildly, but guess where we built the bookcases?  In the kitchen…with a promise that he would help clean up the mess before we did anything else.  Okay then, let get it done.

The bookcase is very sturdy!  I still need to sand and stain it but we are proud of the finished product.  He now plans to make one for his use.  Creating things for the home is part of this Conyers brand of country living.

Bookcase corner. Notice the shelf support on the side.

Postscript:  After helping clean up the kitchen, he said that all sawing activities would be done outside from now on!