Day 1097: Happy Anniversary!

Well we've been enjoying a nice long break, hope you have too. Yesterday was our third anniversary in the house and it's warmed up the reno juices. We have a big project to tackle early in the new year, but until then it's about time to whip our library into shape. That means new bookshelves!

As regular readers are aware, earlier this year we converted the two perfectly fine bookshelves that were in the library into custom jobs for the studio. That's left the other books in quite a state of disarray and we can't have that.

Before tackling the job of making four shelves from scratch we needed to get prepared. That meant tidying up the work space, so we grouped all our spare wood by type:

added a new shelf:

and put some of the more interesting pieces on their higher pedestal:

 

Next we decided to invest in a few specialty tools. Building a bookshelf is pretty exacting and since we need to make four exact copies, it made sense to have a couple items to aid us. This first one will make the holes for removable shelves (which will sit on pegs) uniform:

This one, from the same maker, allows you to attach two pieces of wood with partially hidden screws or dowels:

The goal we're aiming for is a piece we saw at Crate and Barrel more than a year ago. You'll be able to tell us how close we come.