How do I get my bookcase to stand up straight when my floor is sloped
October 10, 2015 4:23 PM   Subscribe

I bought a billy bookcase from Ikea. I assembled it and all went well. Then I moved it to the location where I wanted to be, and discover that the floor slopes down. :( There's a good 3-4 in gap between the bookshelf and the wall. The leveler tool with the bubble and the 3 segments show the bubble squarely in the top segment. I have no handyman skills. How do I safely correct this?
posted by bluelava to Home & Garden (20 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I had this problem in my old flat and solved it by shoving loads of cardboard underneath the bookcase until it was level with the wall. Not a pretty solution, but no-handyman-skill friendly :)
posted by kariebookish at 4:26 PM on October 10, 2015 [10 favorites]


Anchor it to the wall with the anchors/straps sold for baby proofing. After that if there's an obvious gap at the bottom, you can come up with some sort of decorative solution like a strip of fabric around the base to hide the gap.
posted by amro at 4:33 PM on October 10, 2015 [4 favorites]


Yes, anchors at the top. Even with no handyman skills it's not hard to do.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 4:38 PM on October 10, 2015


This doesn't require much in the way of handy man skills, unless you were planning to redo the floor to fix it. I'd suggest wooden shims instead of cardboard because of the large difference, but the principle is the same. Just wedge stuff under one side til it's level.
posted by peppermind at 4:39 PM on October 10, 2015 [17 favorites]


Go to hardware store. Buy packet of "shims" (little wedge-shaped pieces of wood) which should be relatively inexpensive. Go home. Open packet of shims. Shove them under the front edges of the bookshelf feet (start with the skinny end first and push in towards the wall) until your bookshelf is more level. You can stack shims on top of each other if you need more than the thickness of one shim to get the job done. The bookshelf (once loaded) will press down on the shims and hold them in place so you need not worry about them coming loose or whatever.
posted by which_chick at 4:52 PM on October 10, 2015 [15 favorites]


I had the same problem with the Billy bookcase, only in my case it was due to extra padding under the carpet along the wall, which made for an uneven surface. So I solved it by showing leftover carpet scraps, folded in three, under the front of the bookcase, which tilted it back towards the wall. For you it might work better with wooden/plastic wedges if the difference is larger; how about repurposing plastic doorstoppers? Also make sure that you put heavy stuff on the bottom shelf and light stuff on the top shelf, to minimize the risk of it tipping over.
posted by Ender's Friend at 5:10 PM on October 10, 2015


A decent lumberyard should have packs of cedar wood shims - like really narrow pieces of wood shingle only a bit steeper taper - that are used for shimming door and window frames square and true in wood frame construction. You can trim them with a utility knife after installation if you like.
The Lowe's website says they carry them, I think the local HD no longer does.
posted by rudd135 at 5:13 PM on October 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


btw it helps to have two people. one pushes the top of the bookshelf towards the wall, which raises the front edge at the bottom a little, helping the other to push in the shims.
posted by andrewcooke at 5:15 PM on October 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


A standard Billy is 79.5" high. Just because I want to use trig, with a gap at the top of 3", the angle away from the wall is arcsin(3/79.5)=2.16°, and 4" is arcsin(4/79.5)=2.88°. This is to say, get some shims.
posted by zamboni at 5:19 PM on October 10, 2015 [8 favorites]


I have small pieces of thin mdf that I stick under the front of my bookcases to push them back. It's thin enough that it can be cut with a bread knife, or broken by hand. ~6mm, I'd say.
posted by kjs4 at 5:21 PM on October 10, 2015


If you decide to put anchors at the top, since the bookcase will be heavy once full you'll need to make sure that at least one of the anchors is fixed to a stud (which you can find using a magnet).
posted by snorkmaiden at 5:33 PM on October 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


IKEA will give you a free kit to attach it to the wall.
posted by quaking fajita at 5:35 PM on October 10, 2015


These sort of screw/nail on furniture glide can be stacked up to shim the space and then held on with a single screw.

And depending on the height you need this style of nail on furniture glide may work.
posted by Mitheral at 7:19 PM on October 10, 2015


I have a similar situation in the room I use as a library. The bookcases are shimmed up and then screwed to the wall.
posted by thomas j wise at 7:50 PM on October 10, 2015


This is a problem that can be solved for pennies. For? By!
posted by dws at 8:31 PM on October 10, 2015


I had exactly this problem with my Billy bookcase in the last place I lived (thank you, New England construction techniques), and solved it with cedar shims. They stayed in place just fine for the three years I lived there.
posted by Johnny Assay at 5:41 AM on October 11, 2015


I've shimmed all of our shelves because of varying floor slope. I've actually gone slightly paste just level so they actually tilt back a tiny bit. I also used an angle bracket at the top to fix the shelf to the wall. But I would never want that bracket to hold the weight of the shelf while the front end was suspended in the air (especially because the shelves are loaded book shelves).
posted by Brian Puccio at 7:51 AM on October 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Failing shims, last year's phone book can be easily adjusted to be exactly the right height. Use an exacto knife to cut it down so that you don't have anything sticking out, keeping the pages together by keeping at least part of the binding intact. If the slope is extreme use at least two bits of phone book cut to the right height so you have more than one shim.

Last year's phone book is also very useful when hanging a door.

That C++ textbook from the year 2000 makes a good substitute for the phone book, now that phone books are going obsolete.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:08 AM on October 11, 2015


I used these composite shims for my Billys. These are better than the wood shims because they're darker (less easily seen), and you can snap them off to the length you need without any tools or cutting. A few dollars well spent.
posted by jeffamaphone at 5:51 PM on October 11, 2015


Do not just attach the top to the wall with the provided child-safe anchors! They're too flimsy and you'll be unsure whether the bond with the wall was strong enough until the day the whole rig tips over and flattens someone.
Do both: install some shims, as others have explained, and the safety anchors.
posted by Namlit at 11:43 AM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


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