Several years ago, I was stuck at home during the pandemic, struggling through the new “work from home” normal that locked me inside the den of my house for almost everything: daily chores, work, rest, entertainment and life! Not able to see a light from the end of the tunnel, I started to plan an upgrade of the space I’m stuck in, turning it into my dream home library.
The den was in a rectangular shape, with its length approximately twice as much as the width. There were windows and doors on all four walls, which made it impossible to install a full wall of bookshelves. I chose to build bookshelves around the windows on the site of the wall that had the dual windows and make use of these large windows to implement the cozy window seats!
Plan
With the space and ideas both ready, I sketched a cabinet bookshelf plan and superimposed it onto the photo. Before any further work, I spent a week staring at the plan to make sure I was still excited about the new home library!
I just couldn’t express enough how important it is to have a plan! A well-designed plan is more than just a warrant of the outcome, it saves money and more importantly, your time. I used computer software to start from the basic elements of a wood cabinet project — wood boards, plywood, trims and etc. All of them were following the specs from the Home Depot. Once the CAD design was done, I felt like I’ve already built the library, but just virtually. When it’s time to actually execute the plan, I didn’t run into any surprise or miscalculation. I was really glad I spent time going through the plan process.
Above are some of the basic elements I designed, such as 1-1/2″ pine board, 3-1/2″ pine board, 5-1/2″ pine board, 16-3/4″ oak board and 3/4″ plywood.
I virtually cut all the pieces and moved on to assembling different bookshelf cabinet boxes using those basic elements. When the boxes were ready, it was really exciting to see them come together to become a wall of bookshelf.
Now the final step is to see how the design blends into the actual space.
After putting the cabinets together, the home library render could be visualized within the actual office space. Now I’m pretty sure I can start the woodwork!
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