Laura’s Books Finally Have a Home

Santa Claus brought Laura two wall-mounted bookcases to house her extravagant book collection. It wasn’t too hard to build them. Let me rephrase.

It wasn’t too complicated to build them.

Building two bookcases was hard. But I had fun, and I got back in touch with woodworking (even if it was pretty basic).

Here’s how it went. First, a neat picture that doesn’t really showcase the finished product, but I like the photo, so it goes first. See the bookcase in the background? Look, there’s a Christmas Spider-man in the front. Neat.

Here’s the finished product, two simple laminated bookcases, 13 inches deep by 24 inches wide and 48 inches tall.

My first step was to draw up a little design in qcad. Here’s a PDF of the file as well as a DXF for import into a wide range of vector/CAD drawing programs.

Next, just to see how the things would look in the space I had, I rendered them out in POV-ray complete with a subroutine of random books. Download the source.

With all the theoretical stuff done, the only thing left was to build the thing. Should be simple.

Yeah, right.

Day One

I took my measurements to the lumber yard ordered two 48×96 inch pieces of plywood, had the guys cut them up for me ($2 per cut), bought some self tapping anchor bolts (walls are concrete in Puerto Rico), some 1 3/4" #10 wood screws, some contact cement (for gluing the laminate), and four sheets of white laminate @ $10 apiece. All total, it came out to $150 (which would, of course, go up later… but that’s coming).

First thing I did was assemble the wood into its final shape to make sure the cuts were correct. Everything came out perfectly. When possible, let your local lumber yard do your cuts for you. It would be a pure luxury to have such a great, high speed, powerful table saw. A man can dream can’t he?

With the box assembled and checked, I rested on my laurels and did not do another thing that day. I KNEW what was coming, and I wanted to savor my small success.

Day Two

Let’s cut and glue some laminate, shall we? I’ve never done this before, but the directions sounded easy enough, use your utility knife to score the laminate, then carefully break it along the perforation. Check. Except, I kept tearing it. My perforations were uneven, not deep enough, or would veer off at the worse possible moment. Sigh. I salvaged what I could and quit for a few hours, resigned to the fact that I would have to buy more laminate. Perhaps the sweat dripping from my brow was causing me to rush.

A couple hours later, I rejoined the battle. I successfully cut a few small pieces of laminate. I shall now glue them. Cue the blood red sticky brain cell killing noxious contact cement. Horrible stuff! Good thing I was doing it outside where there was a nice breeze… and – drops of rain. D’oh. I scrambled in with my tools and glue covered panels sticking to my arms.

After a half hour of drying, I was ready to press the panels together. SUCCESS! The glue held well, and I trimmed off the excess with my router’s laminate trimmer and all was well. I ran back and forth because of the rain a couple times and managed to glue two or three complete panels.

I should mention, however, as a precaution, a caveat if you will, that upon later examination, I noticed the red stuff all over my hands, arms, and legs was not, in fact, entirely glue. Some of it was blood, drawn by the fine slicing edge of the fresh cut samurai laminate. A mighty warrior he was, for his blade was NOT dull. It was razor sharp upon the edges where it was cut. I had learned of the master’s skill the hard way. Day three would feature me with multiple bandages.

Day two also contained a mishap that is only amusing in hindsight. Content with my assembly and swelled with pride at my modest accomplishment, I left the assembled box in the middle of the family room floor that night. I stepped out to put the house to bed, admired my handiwork, put the doggies in their houses, closed the doors, turned off the fans and lights, grabbed my bottle of water, and strode toward the bedroom.

The fall was not even registered. I was simply and abruptly crushed into the box. Yeeaaii, ouch, &#(%& (this is a family blog afterall). Was this what soldiers who fell into booby traps in Vietnam felt like? OMFG, it hurt. I had flayed the skin from my shins, forearms, and where my wristwatch had caught the edge and dug deep, the skin had already started to swell.

Luckily, copious quantities of ice saved me from a week of misery, but at the end of day two I recounted:

1. Blood – Check
2. Sweat – Check
3. Tears – Check

Things were going smashingly. We’re right on schedule.

Day Three

Day three was more of the same, more cuts, more blood, more cursing, more lifting, moving and avoiding the rain. Glued a few more panels, made a few mistakes. I was approaching something resembling a finished product.

Day Four

After four days, I had finally done it. I had constructed a box!

Feel my power! The box had two sturdy sides, a top, a bottom, and a back and was laminated inside and out. Yeay! Now I’ll need to do the shelves. Uggh!

Day Five

Suffice it to say, there are no more days. It only took five days. By 2 am, it was on the wall and loaded with books.

"It looks great, Jim," my ever supportive wife remarked. "Now all you have to do is make the other one."

Day Six

Guess what? The second bookcase only took a day and a half. How’s that for a learning curve. I developed a technique for cutting the laminate. I got the gluing down to a science. Measuring, drilling, pressing, etc., all went a lot easier the second time around. Stuff that seemed irritatingly awkward, now went off without a hitch.  I guess it’s like that with everything.  I’m just happy I got to build something and I got away from the computer for a spell.

Cool.

"That’s great, Jim," cheered Laura, "Now you can redo the bathroom cabinets."