Building my Bookshelf Part 1

After my success with other projects, I decided to tackle a much larger slightly more daunting task. Building a cabinet/bookshelf combo. Now in actuality this project isn’t really done, since I haven’t put the cabinet doors on the bottom section. But it still looks good in the house! Today’s post is going to be about where I began.
I started with a bunch of 1×4 in. pieces of wood. More aptly named a big pile of wood….

Obviously there are other sizes of wood in this picture…those will be used later on. I started with the 1×4’s to make the backing of the bookshelf/cabinet. I liked this idea, because when it’s all said and done, you get a variety of grains that I think look really cool when put together side by side. This was a fairly simple process using my biscuit joiner. Of note, make sure you use glue on more than just the biscuits, do the full length of the wood, and use biscuits near the ends as well. I think I used about 4 to five biscuits per connections I made. I did this is segments, starting with two pieces at a time, then putting together those sections to make four, and so on until I reached the desired width I wanted. I left the various lengths of wood until I had the full backing together, but I made an effort to keep one edge fairly level as I glued everything together.

Once I had the full back glued together nice and strong, I was ready to cut the backing to size. I did this using my circular saw and a fence as a guide (using a table saw would have been nearly impossible given the 80ish by 50ish inches of wood I now had). Ultimately I would also cut the backing into two separate parts, splitting the bookshelf portion and the cabinet portion in two.
This is the point where I took a little bit of break, I tend to dive right in on projects, and this was one of those projects I needed to come up with a real design plan, and how I was going to make this bookshelf/cabinet very sturdy and aesthetically pleasing. There are a lot of design programs out there that offer free programs, and the one I ultimately used actually had a template I could start with as a base design. Designing the bookshelf is important, but I still needed to figure out how I was actually going to put everything together, and that’s where asking questions comes into play. One of my great friends came over one afternoon, and he brought a few tools with him, the best one being a Keegan Joiner (check out the links on my home page and you’ll see one). He showed me how to use the Kregg Joiner to combine the bases, sides and top to the cabinet section.

Using the Kregg joiner made piecing together the sides, bottom, and backing really easy. It also gave my cabinet section a lot of strength in the joints, which means it can handle a little more weight. Tomorrow I’ll go into putting in the top and the frame I built that will ultimately be the mounting point for the cabinet doors. Up until putting the topper and frame in, putting the cabinet together wasn’t very difficult. But I quickly encountered some issues I experienced (especially putting the top on). I’ll save those headaches for tomorrow! As always, I’d love to hear from you (no one has commented on anything yet!) so please connect with me and ask questions or offer recommendations! More tomorrow!!!!!