apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

You could mount it to the wall, it'd be fine in LA.

I'm sure she's secured it to the wall. And by the way, Los Angeles isn't the only place in the world plagued by earthquakes ("The premise seems great for almost anywhere except here in Los Angeles"). Surprised?

i HATE books shelved by color! YEEEICCKKK!!

These books aren't sorted according to color though... Eva even mentions that "everything is divided into different categories such as art, music, Dutch, and translated prose literature".

great job! It looks beautiful :)

Enough with the freaking out about earthquakes!!! An earthquake strong enough to mess with this setup and you'd have ALOT more to worry about than tipped books. Anyone recall Loma Prieta?

It's great to see this on here. I agree with the usual Apartment Therapy perspective that books often look too cluttered, but this looks wonderful. Maybe the visual clutter is reduced by the way she aligned the fronts of all the books?

drool

Anything about 6 feet tall is a complete waste unless you only plan to put books up there you rarely ever use.

"I sleep a huge list to each book for the right issues, in hard cover and the best translations"

Huh-wha?

This is lovely system and I am jealous of her book collection.

This system is elegant and practical and affordable, too. One of the great things about bringing the books all the way out to the front edge of shelves is that it prevents dust from accumulating on the edges of the shelves. Frees you up for more reading. :)

Katy
http://fengshuibyfishgirl.com

Nice :)

With 2000 books, there's probably quite a few that you're not going to need to reach that often. Looks like you'd only need the ladder for about a third of the books, or even less if you were tall.

I'm mostly impressed that she manages to keep that many books tidy. All my bookshelves tend to end up with books tucked in sideways on top of other books or stacked on the floor...

Before copying this idea, I would definitely check out other options. Seems to me that a custom made bookcase might cost less, even a glass fronted one.

beautiful library. She even has the ladder so she is good to go when she needs to pull a book from the tippy top.

Was this letter translated in Babelfish?

I'm sorry -- I should be more constructive. I think it's a beautiful idea - I grew up with something similar that my mother put together by hanging book shelves all the way up my bedroom walls in a house that had 14' ceilings. My bedroom served as a library, but she always made sure to keep books that she knew I would enjoy on the lower shelves. She made me an avid reader, and an avid dreamer (my favorites back then were international fairy tailes (more like cultural stories) and the world atlas).

Custom-made price would probably depend a lot on how much of the work you could do yourself.

On the bright side, if you did do it custom you could install one of those rolling library ladders.... always been a dream of mine to have one!

man! i dont even have enough books to fill my 8 cube expedit :( i definitely need to build my collection!

cool idea... i think built ins would be cheaper- especially if you knew someone who could help out with the labor... but with these you can always take them with you if you move and change the look/split them up throughout the house if you wanted.

THANK YOU, mischief7! High-five!

If anyone can refer a carpenter who can custom make floor-to-ceiling bookcases as tall and wide as this and as smoothly finished for this price, please let me know. They need to "come out of the woodwork" if they do exist at all (pardon the pun!).

Katy
http://fengshuibyfishgirl.com

"Enough with the freaking out about earthquakes!"

Worrying about something isn't exactly freaking out. My parents, friends and family all had their homes and property damaged during the Northridge earthquake. Whole apartment complexes toppled, streets cracked open with gas lines ablaze...people I knew sustained enough damage to remember it as something that changed our community. I grew up here in LA and I'm not afraid of earthquakes...they're something we have to live with in California, but if I had a huge wall of IKEA shelving stacked, I'd at least consider it something to be concerned about. It's sorta weird you're freaking out about someone else supposedly freaking out :D

FYI

Eva's comments were translated by Babelfish (or a similar service) from the original Dutch, which is why some sentences seem to make no sense at all.

I LOVE IT!

For $1000 or so, I'm not sure it's possible to do much better than this.

Now I wish (once again...) I had tall ceilings....

That looks amazing. It makes me sad that I gave away most of my books though, due to lack of storage :( Color me green with envy!

I'm drooling. I have always wanted books full of shelves.

haha...I mean shelves full of books!

@bromelia
agreed. for that money where i live you could have an awesome custom library built. but maybe not in los angeles.

We did something similar to this but on a smaller scale with black-brown Ikea shelves.

I priced mahogany shleving for the Library's local history room not long ago. We are talking expensive wood (to match what is already there) but not THAT much more in wood costs. A segment of shelving about a quarter of the Expedits shown priced in at over $10,000. Make them birch and even at half that would be $5,000. DIY custom might be cheaper, but hiring a carpenter would not be.

These look great and are removable (unlike most custom, which would be built in).

Being "vertically challenged", even my Billys with height extensions are too high for me without a step stool, though, so these would be a big challenge -- even with the ladder.

As someone who does this for a living, I can tell you it's not possible to come even remotely close to the $1100 or so she spent to pull this off.

Simple math: furniture grade plywood or MDF (walnut, cherry, maple) runs $120 or so a sheet. Melamine (Ikea) runs $35. Now how many sheets are we talking? Then there is the labor - has to get built, right? Plumbers make $90 an hour. I make half. Then it has to be delivered. And then installed - what, a day or two?

Custom is better, you get exactly what you want, you can call me or track me down if there is ever a problem (Ikea probably won't pop by your place on a Sunday), but it almost always costs more.

That said, I like what she did.

Absolutely lovely! I love the random colors all over the shelves.

my dream wall.

This is brilliant.

Better than a custom job, IMO, because not only is it likely cheaper, but she'll be able to take all the shelving with her if she moves.

Also, you can build this one Expedit at a time, as you can afford them.

i recently went to a party hosted by an architect and saw this:

http://23.media.tumblr.com/8N62SS7ujjr2j4ehwV1iov0co1_500.jpg

freakin best usage of expedite i've ever seen!

john@handmade: your furniture is beautiful. Thanks for being the honest voice of the other side, too!

That looks great.
(ps: if I could get my hands on the original text I could translate... native Dutch speaker here)

This is the best thing I have ever seen.

I just turned to my boyfriend and whispered, "I want that."

i really would like to see a custom built library for that money anywhere in the western world. not happening unless you do it all by yourself, and do not have to pay for the labor (as john@handmade points out). no way somebody could compete with Ikea prices and make a living, but then there is a huge difference in quality, too (this said by somebody who is happily living in a lot of Ikea because she cannot afford anything else).


lovely library! compliments!

I wanted to something like on half the scale, but my wife vetoed it. Bravo for you!

Btw, for all the people who are saying they can do custom or a better solution for the same $US 1k, please tell us how. I cannot imagine gettting anywhere close to half the book storage for that amount with any bookshelf products not from IKEA.

@greengelato -- the shelving you linked to is amazing.

Wow! In the last few months I have been considering doing EXACTLY THIS with the different sizes of Expedit. I wondered how it would look -- I'm so glad someone else has made the experiment. It seems like it will be worth it!

All I can say is yikes.
EXPEDIT is made of ~1/8" mdf, otherwise known as GLORIFIED CARDBOARD. Furthermore, THEY ARE HOLLOW. I've been known execute some designs of questionable safety with IKEA stuff, but this is completely ridiculous and CRAZY UNSAFE, earthquake zone or not.

Yeah, I'm with splatgirl. I sincerely hope she doesn't stand where the ladder ends to get books...
Expedit has a weight limit for each shelf (and the tops) and I'm sure, even if they're attached to the wall, it is being exceeded multiple times over...
I don't even think Expedit is intended to hold a full load of books on each of its shelves let alone this.

Like others, I have done something similar with the Billy bookcases, using the extentions to go all the way to the ceiling. I live in earthquake country and my husband and I make sure all bookcases/tall and heavy furniture is always braced into studs.

While the venneer-thin backing on the cases are crap and can or should be replaced eventually, the shelves themselves hold the weight of the books very well. I have quite a few heavy books and none of the shelves have experiences any buckling or warping after several years. We had cheap bookcases from Wal-Mart years ago when we were on a budget and none too smart (the hubby bought them, because I dislike Wal-Mart) and those suckers buckled under much lesser weight. All props go to IKEA in this area...

Love it! I adore the entire wall of shelving!

http://www.carinagardner.com

I love the setup, but I too wonder about the safety. Would hate to see that go wrong.

As to the translation, please let a real person translate it. tgsgirl already offered and I'm offering myself as well. I'm sure Eve has something interresting to say, I only I knew what.

High ceilings...check. In the process of building a wall of Expedits. I'm hacking a bit since I took out a couple of the vertical components so I can fit my printer on the shelves.

I love the height of the ceiling that permits this great display of books! I wish I had place for all my books - I've always wanted a library. When I move, I'm going to have floor to ceiling shelves *somewhere*!

My husband built something similar for me in our dining room with much shorter ceilings using melamine and the materials alone were easily what she spent on the bookcases.

try www.bookmooch.com to give a home to book you'll never read again, it saved my apartment from looking like this...

As a woodworker myself, I agree with the previous commenters that said you can't do this yourself for the same price. MDF would be cheapest, birch or maple plywood would be stronger and more expensive, and actual wood planks would look nicest and be even more expensive. All that said, if you have this many books, you've probably already spent a few thousand just on reading matter.

What bothers me the most though is that she's stashed the games up high and out of easy reach...

Totally cool. Am I right to assume the individual expedit units are also secured to each other to make it more stable?

This is a terrific, inspiring idea! But a couple of questions:

Coming at this from a practical perspective, those Expedits are HEAVY. How on earth did she or the architect featured in someone's comment stack them so high?

Also, I would worry about the structural issues of stacking these bookcases. Earthquakes or not. Does an engineer want to weigh (ha!) in on this one?

Really think that AT should explore the structural issues, just to satisfy our curiosity.

How these are stacked and/or attached - if done properly - is no different than hanging a kitchen upper or lower cabinet; they are always screwed to studs, so the support is through the back. There should really be not much downward weight at all.

john--i visited your website and loved your work. i didn't see you at CAboom! High Point furniture market, did i? i'll be covering HP spring market on my blog, too. kudos to bringing real design back to the furniture industry which sorely needs it.
katy
http://fengshuibyfishgirl.com

john, I don't quite see what you mean. Could you explain?

The Expedit has a hollow core construction with short dowels holding the short and long shelves to the frame, and long-ish screws holding the outer frame together. No back on it. And in the spaces between where the shelves meet the frame, the outer frame is thin veneer and 1/4th inch mdf.

The wall anchor that IKEA provides with the shelf system is a small L-bracket and a very short screw to secure it to the unit. Owner provides the appropriate wall fastener, ideally a long and coarse theadded screw into a stud. But I still don't trust the short screw to resist much more than a rambunctious large dog. Kids or lucha libres, forget it!

Perhaps a long metal strip along the top rail of the Expedit might secure the strongest points of the shelf to the studs in the wall, but I can't imagine how the weight of the unit could be transferred to the wall instead of down.

Monster-size L-brackets under the upper units? What do you think?

I love this look and I only wish Eva had been an Evan.
In regards to the people who say it can't be done for less, when I was building my shelves I did the math. Here's what I did:
1.buy nice white wood boards at home depot. (2"x10"s for the verticals, 1"x8"s for the shelves)
2. Have the guy there cut it for you (1st cut's free, $2 ea addtl cut, plan your sizes ahead of time).
3.get re-enforced galvanized brackets ( 4. measure again, drill holes and assemble using trusty power drill and help of a friend.
Shelves less than 4' wide shouldn't sag even under cramped conditions.

Unfortunately it has recently come to my attention that the untreated wood should really have been sealed before I put books of any value on it. So now I need to take the books back down and either spray it with paint or varnish or wrap the shelves with wax paper. I'm leaning towards loading up the staple gun and trying wax paper.

I didn't realize it doesn't have a back.

You could use L-brackets into a stud, or add a 3/4" thick cleat/strip 2-3" high that runs the length of the back opening and is attached at each end as well as to the bottom (or top) it is butted against. To just hold it in place, one is find. If you want to hang the case, add 3 or 4. Make sense?

The fact is, backs add strength as well as help keep cabinets square by preventing racking. Never screw directly through a 1/4" back into a wall. There always needs to be something behind the back at least a 1/2" thick.

As to shelving - honestly, it is never a good idea to go wider than 36" without having it reinforced along the front with a 3/4" nosing. Prevents eventual sag.

Even though I do this for a living, I realize there is definitely a time and a place for Ikea. This is one of them. Yes, you may save a little money doing it yourself -but only if you don't factor in your own labor and possible frustration.

Just don't try this if your collection is comprised of photography/art books. The Ikea shelves aren't strong enough and sag...