Craftsman Bookcases

The house we bought in Boise in great in so many ways, from the location to the garage. One of the few downsides is lack of available wall space for bookshelves as compared to the NY house, so we've had to be a bit more creative. One solution was to build smaller bookcases that could sit on the hearth in the family room. One full wall of our house is dedicated to the fireplace and hearth and is covered in stone veneer with built in glass curio shelves. We really like the wall, but it has limited functionality in terms of decorating.

So my charge was to find a design that the wife would like and would work in this space. I found one in issue 179 of Fine Woodworking magazine that fit both bills. The design had to be tweaked a bit to better match out needs, but the changes were modest. I stretched it out to 48" wide and shortened it to 32" high. And oh yeah...the wife wanted two. Here's what the finished products look like:

They're made of white ash, using traditional frame and panel design. All of the frames are assembled using mortise and tenon joinery and the panels (sides and back) were resawn to 1/4" from 4/4 stock. The back was also changed from the plan to accommodate the wider stance.  I was worried about shelf sag over a 48" run of heavy books, so I split the back in half and added a center rail with holes for a fifth shelf pin for added support.  The back consists of 1/4" thick slats that have ship-lap rabbets milled into them so they slide into the top and bottom grooves and make a nice paneled back surface.

The finish is golden oak stain followed by 3 coats of a satin wipe-on polyurethane.  Here they are on the hearth wall.  I'm very happy with how they turned out, and more importantly, so is the wife even though they took many more months to complete than originally planned.  Now it's up to Beth to unpack book boxes!