apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

i would agree to keep everything on one wall though i would look at some other types of storage in addition to the shelves or to be used with the shelves. like drawers or covered shelves to take care of clutter or odds and ends that always seem to get stuck on shelves in front of the books or on the cd's. personally i keep dvd's in a plastic tote under the couch, though that is mostly because i don't have a proper media cabinet or anywhere else to put them.

I think the container store is having their Elfa shelving sale .. go cover the walls with Elfa shelving, it's perfect for exactly the kind of solution Maxwell describes.

Think like an architect and go up in a small foot print. Make use of teh height in your space!

currently you have both set of shelves placed right next to each other. maybe consider separating the book shelves and joining them with a single lateral shelf (in the shape of an upside down U). this would enable the bookcases to appear as a frame on the wall and spread the collection of tbe books (so that it appears less cluttered).

do you own or rent?

I just had custom shelves built for my apt- it was the best thing I ever did for myself. Floor to ceiling on a 9 foot long wall in my wide foyer. If you can do built-ins, by all means, do it!!!

We also have a tiny apartment (no way! in manhattan? i find that hard to believe) but with tall ceilings and lots of books to store. We got these leaning shelves from Room & Board -- they are very roomy and feel like they take very little space. Sometimes you can find these shelves at other outlets, too, for less.

http://roomandboard.com/rnb/collection.do?method=get&id=377612&cat=56

I agree with the comments above, but first I would prune your collection. Donate any books that you will never read again, clear out all the cheap paperbacks and random items. Then buy a large cd binder and fill it with your DVDs... I can fit all of my cds in one binder, my dvds in another, freeing up precious space for more interesting and useful things.

Have you considered...

The Hungarian Shelves from Instructables.com

I haven't tried to DIY this meself, but am tempted everday.

http://www.instructables.com/id/ELJQZB9L0YEP2863OB/

Re: pruning one's collection. Jonathan (and many others of us on this list, I would suspect) is not likely to discard or donate many of his books: his library is a pretty active one. I think, in fact, that he's looking for a solution that will allow him to EXPAND his collection of volumes over time.

I like the idea of going up floor to ceiling and wrapping over the desk itself. The great thing about Elfa is that you can adjust the height of the shelves so that you don't have any wasted space between the book and the top of the shelf. If you went that route, Jonathan, I would help you drill!

one last idea- I saw this once- you could do a single shelf about 8-12 inches below the ceiling, lining one or two (or all!) walls. It looks cool, and your stuff is up up and away!

Also, prune some stuff (pretend you are moving!) and then get some linen or canvas boxes- something to stow some clutter.

good luck!

Maxwell, this reminds me of your Mission:Organization episode with that girl Jasie who was a teacher. You wanted to put up Elfa shelves to hold her books and she was complaining that she didn't want "big giant" book shelves on her wall. You expertly and (more kindly than I would have probably) pointed out that if she wanted to keep all her books, she *needed* a big shelf. She was out of touch with just how many she had, I guess.

Anyway, I love the Elfa shelving for stuff like this. It's very strong and the solid shelving comes nice and narrow so you can sneak a lot of book storage into not a lot of space. Good luck!

On the recommendation of others on AT, i bought shelves from ISS Design They were a very good price, in Walnut with a dark stain, and came in about a week. Also, they are generally great guys. Please check out their site.

I just had the same issue, and actually went the same route that Maxwell suggested. One complete wall in my dining room is covered with shelves, started from the top of the baseboard to the ceiling. I bought the standards and the brackets from Ikea. Of all the places I visited while comparison shopping, Ikea has the best deal on these parts. Everyone else has those double-holed standards, which were relatively expensive, especially if you need a lot of them. Ikea also has a deal on the brackets, which they sell in pairs. Then I got the shelving from Home Depot, where they cut them to size for me. The toughest part was finding shelves that didn't have a lot of knots and had clean edges. It was worth the search. Of course, you have to make sure you have the right anchors for the walls. The longest Ikea standards are 72 inches, so for the shelves to reach the ceiling, I bought 30 inch standards and staggered them with the longer ones. They shelves look spectacular. My landlord asked me to do the same thing for her in her unit.

by the way, I can send you pictures of my shelves if you like. I also did the same thing in my last apartment in los angeles. I had really high ceiling there and it worked even better. The Los Angeles photos are linked here. I'll take a picture of the ny shelves right now and load them up.

Maxwell and everyone,

Thanks for the many and varied suggestions. Lisa is right: pruning is not an option; in fact, I am contemplating a surge of additional books. (Since I'm an academic, it's an active library, not an archive: believe me, this is *already* a pruned version of the collection. You should see what was left behind in the move to this apartment, book-wise.)

No dissenters on the all-on-one-wall principle? I'm wondering why that's the rule of thumb. I loved the "Hungarian" suggestion, but will probably go for the Elfa or Ikea options, and would like to take up Lisa and Eddie on their offers: Eddie, if you want to send more pix, please do so to jk103@nyu.edu. Lisa, you'll be hearing from me soon.

Jonathan

We are book collectors and one thing we like about homemade as opposed to storebought shelves is that storebought tend to be too deep. An 8 inch board (really 7 1/2 makes a good shelf for most books. You only need a few 10 or 12 inch bookshelves -- for oversized books. Our local Chinese lumberyard will deliver fairly good cheap pine (with a few knots) to stain or paint.

you don't need to go all the way to a custom solution in order to get a built-in look. I had an 8X10 hallway wall that I wanted to use for storage. Mike's unfinished furniture sold solid wood bookcases that they were willing to customize within a range of standard size and widths -- they even did a back cutout to fit the profile of the baseboard. I bought 4 identical units sized to fit the wall perfectly and painted them to match the wall. Now I have 80 sq ft of book storage space, and the footprint is only 9 inches deep. I've gotten a lot of compliments on the way it looks. And if I move, I can take them with me and reconfigure

Jonathon, I don't like to break up book collections because it sort of (to me) looks "thrown together" as if you just found little spaces and decided to stuff them with books all over your home. Keeping them all in one spot makes it look deliberate, and if it's large, it becomes a design element.

The exception (again, in my opinion) would be if you have a specific category of books that you really need to keep on the second floor, or specifically near your office, bedroom, etc. for a particular purpose. If not, I think it's better to keep them all together.

I also echo what Monarda said about shallow shelves. This is why I like the Elfa shelving, because they have solid shelves that come in an 8 inch depth.

One last suggestion. If you go for Elfa or some other similar shelving solution, you can create desk space by selecting and installing wider planks (24") at desk height. I've done this and it works great with my laptop. I also installed a much more narrow shelf at the bottom for my router, external HD, and wiring. The best part is, everything is off the floor.

IKEA is not a bad solution. Their billy bookcase system works well if done right. One trick is "repeated element". Line up three or four of them together side by side. Do not just stuff all the books on the shelves. "Create empty space" - Put in decorative items like small artwork/pieces. "lower visual noise" -- try to keep books the same height together. Some people even go as far as arranging by color, but not for a real bookperson who will want to arrange by subject. Put some lighting on top of the bookcases for a "custom" look.