Hi and Happy Monday!
Thanks so much for all the comments and likes on the new plans I posted last week for my leaning ladder desk!
And thank you to all of you who watched the video too - I'm glad that putting the extra time into creating video is helpful to some of you!
I promised you I'd share with you the bookshelf plans too!
The bookshelves have been sanity savers for organizing my office. I love having the different sized shelves to sort out my stuff. As a working mom, with small children and limited babysitting, my desk has to be super organized. I don't have time to look for paperwork or clear off my desk to work - it always has to be tidy and everything easy to find.
Building the bookshelves followed the same steps as the desk, but I made the overall width about half of the desk size (just under 16" to maximize cuts on 8 foot long material), and of course, more shelves. I love that the shelves are all 1x boards - so no plywood cutting or edge banding to dress up raw plywood edges.
One trick that really saved me a ton of time was this:
I set my first shelf, with 9-1/2" space underneath the shelf. I used a level and clamps to get everythign just right.
Then I screwed the shelf to the legs with 1-1/4" screws.
Then I cut two plywood blocks exactly 11" in height and set them on top of the first shelf.
Then I just set the next shelf on top of the blocks, and screwed it in place.
And repeated those steps for all of the remaining shelves.
This saved a ton of time and frusturation, as placing those shelves can be a pain, especially if you are having to measure around lower shelves.
Another little tip is I built the two bookshelves before the main desk piece. Then I clamped the desk legs to the bookshelf legs (see in photo above) so the legs matched exactly. Then when I went to put the shelves in in the desk, I just matched them up with the shelves in the bookshelves. This made installing the desk shelves much easier too.
The leaning ladder bookshelf plans follow (if this is the homepage, you'll need to click READ MORE below). You can find the leaning ladder desk plans here.
Enjoy! XO Ana