Guide to Building an Inverted Bookshelf

by tomtheswanson

1.2K124

Intro: Guide to Building an Inverted Bookshelf

If you are the type of person who loves to read and collect books, you must be prepared to tackle with a problem: sooner or later you are going to run out of available space for your books. Once you have reached the limits of your bookshelves, you are going to need to find other solutions.

One possible option you have is building a shelf that you can utilise for your books. This idea for a home improvement project does require some skills and tools, but luckily there is one design, which is easy enough for pretty much everyone to tackle with. The inverted bookshelf is not only an easy project even for a beginner craftsman, but also a very interesting addition to any décor. If you feel like you want to invest some time and effort in building an inverted bookshelf, here is a simple guide of the process that you can use to give this furniture assembly task a try:

STEP 1:

- Prepare your materials - you are going to need a piece of wood and brackets, as typical materials used for building a shelf. Other than that, to build this particular type of shelf you will also need elastic webbing. The webbing is going to be attached with staplers, so a staple gun is going to make the task a lot easier.

- Take measures - the most important part of building an inverted bookshelf is taking the measures of your books. It is a good thing to know how wide they are so that the elastic webbing doesn’t crush them. You need god support against the board, so make sure you take the measures right so that you don’t damage your books. Consider how many books you want to hang, as that will determine how big of a board and how many elastic bands you are going to need.

- Time to staple the elastic to the board - two pieces of elastic for each book should be enough. Staple those down the middle of the board and repeat this for every book you want to feature on the shelf. It is wise to start with the excess of elastic facing in and fold it to run it down the board. By now you should have the measures of your books so you know how long each band should be. It is a good idea to staple farther (1 inch at least), as that will guarantee your books are not damaged.

- Test - every handyman knows that they should test what they are making every so often. That way you will know if any corrections are needed.

STEP 2:

- Attach to the wall with the brackets - building an inverted bookshelf ends with attaching the brackets to the wall. This is no complex task, as simple screws work just fine. After all, books are not that heavy anyway. Pick your brackets in accordance to your preference.

That concludes the building process of an inverted shelf. You can now enjoy the optical trick of hanging books.