After months of designing, revising, shopping, and finally construction the built-ins are 99% complete. The last item that needs to be installed is the rolling ladder I mentioned in another post. The rail and brackets should arrive in early to mid-July.
So how did we get here?
As with most things it started with a blank space.
After planning, the first concrete step was to figure out a way to attach the bookcase to the wall. There were a couple considerations to keep in mind. The first was that I didn’t want to remove any of the wainscoting or trim work from the wall. I wanted to do as little damage to the original elements of the room. The second issue was structural. I used a magnetic nail finder in an attempt to find the wall’s studs. The results were literally all over the place. Unlike a newer house which would have studs every 16 to 24 inches, I couldn’t determine a pattern. I tried using a drill with a small drill bit to confirm which areas behind the plaster were solid. If I had to guess, I think some of the vertical studs only travel a few feet before ending. Maybe at that point there is a crossbar, then another vertical piece was added several inches over? The end result was too unreliable to try to screw heavy shelves into.
The solution was spanning the wall with boards that provided enough of an offset to allow the shelves to sit in front of the decorative trim, but still be mounted securely.
The first bay of shelves was centered on the wall. It was then locked into place by trimmed down 2×4’s on each side.
The next two bays were slid into place and screwed into the supportive 2×4’s. Additional 2×4’s were added to each end.
The light fixtures were attached to the header. The wiring was run through the gap between the center and right bays. Finally, the trim work was added.