Looking For the Perfect... Shelves

December 27, 2006 9:36 PM

This is a long shot, but I'm looking to purchase shelving units that match, or at least come very close, to those pictured here

It's solid wood construction (I'm not savvy enough to know one wood from another), 24" x 72" x 9", with six non-adjustable shelves each placed twelve inches apart. Nevermind the dust, or the dweeby selection of DVDs.

While having them match aesthetically would be great, I'm mostly looking for something that comes close dimensionally... Though it was surely designed as a bookshelf, I find it perfectly suited for housing my apartment's DVD collection (which has recently expanded beyond the capacity of a single unit). Any suggestions where I could purchase something similar at a reasonable cost? All of my searching is yielding units made of particle board and the like. Thanks for any help you can provide!

posted by incomple to home & garden (8 comments total)

Thanks to whoever edited the post; I didn't realize how unwieldy it would look on the front page. Mea culpa.
posted by incomple at 9:45 PM on December 27, 2006

That is a homemade unit--1" pine, a plywood backer, and honey pine stain. If you can swing a hammer, you can easily build one yourself.

Draw a simple plan on a piece of paper--all you need is the length and width of the boards. Go to the lumberyard and buy the boards. Have them cut the plywood backer to size. At home cut the shelves to length and nail them together with 2" finishing nails. Set the nails (drive them below the surface of the wood with a $2 nail set or with another nail) and fill the holes with wood putty. Nail the back on. Now finish with honey pine wiping varnish--you can't go wrong.

Really, you can do this.
posted by LarryC at 10:18 PM on December 27, 2006 [1 favorite]

Unfinished furniture stores ("Bare Wood Furniture" and the like) excel at bookcases like yours, and they can match the stain. They can probably match the curved edges too if you ask.
posted by acorncup at 10:33 PM on December 27, 2006

I built some shelves very, very similar to this about 20 years ago. Still using them, after several relocations. Solid stuff. They're awesome conversation pieces because of the fact that I laid them out and assembled them on an uneven carpeted apartment floor, so even though they're square as a unit, the shelves individually are quite uneven as far as where they meet the front plane.

I put mine together with screws, pre-drilling the holes, applying a tiny bit of wood glue to each screw, and counter-sinking the screwheads slightly.
posted by Bradley at 10:34 PM on December 27, 2006

This sounds like an EXCELLENT project... Great idea, LarryC and Bradley. I'll also take your advice, acorncup, and shop around to see if I can find anything cheap before committing to lumber.
posted by incomple at 10:50 PM on December 27, 2006

Tell the truth; you posted this so you could show how good your taste in film is, huh?
posted by wsg at 1:39 AM on December 28, 2006

If you think the Criterion/Doctor Who/Simpsons/Monty Python shelves are good, you should see the ones below it!

Anyway, I can't take credit for most of what you see, as most of it belongs to my roommate.
posted by incomple at 7:42 AM on December 28, 2006

I was talking about the Cassavetes, Godfather, Fellini, Citizen Kane stuff.
posted by wsg at 10:40 AM on December 28, 2006