Woodworking Project - Bookcase
Back to the Rolling "M" Workshop Projects Page
For our son's third Christmas, Shari and I decided that it was about time for him to have a proper place to store his growing collection of books. From my observations, there are two approaches to building furniture for kids. The first approach is to build "temporary" furniture using inexpensive materials and finishes with the assumption that the furniture will only last for a few years. This is what I did when I rebuilt/recycled an old pine chest of drawers into a changing table. The other approach is to build "bulletproof" furniture using heavy, good quality materials and finishes with the hope that it will last through the child's teen and early adult years. This is the approach that I took with our son's bookcase. We wanted something that would adapt as our son grows and his bedroom decor changes.
The bookcase is simple, but sturdy and well thought-out. The case is built of 3/4" oak plywood with a 1/4" oak plywood back, a solid oak face frame and a solid oak top. The construction challenge was to build the entire case with no visible mechanical fasteners. This required LOTS of gluing, clamping, and waiting. But, it was worth it. There were no nail holes to fill or screw holes to plug. The end result is a very clean, encumbered look. The over-all size of the bookcase is 48" wide x 40" tall x 12" deep. This size was chosen to fit along the knee wall in our son's bedroom. The shelves are solidly mounted (non-adjustable), for durability's sake, and are spaced to accommodate several common book sizes. The finish is Minwax Colonial Maple stain topped with ZAR Aqua polyurethane. This finish has proven (on other projects) to be durable and easy to repair, if/when necessary. After all, this bookcase was built for a three year old!
Here are some snapshots of the bookcase:
Case Assembly
| 
Case Assembly
| 
Case Assembled
| 
Case Assembled
|
Face Frames
| 
Face Frames
| 
Face Frames & Top
| 
Face Frames & Top
|
Staining Begins
| 
Staining Begins
| 
Ooooo! Shiny!
| 
Finished and Assembled
|