Bookcase

By HBMini

June 29, 2007
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I would love to show you how I made the bookcase and hidden stairs, the problem is... I don't know if I can explain it.

There are so many factors that went into this.

1) the tower wall is around 7.5 inches.

2) the ceiling in the bedroom is 8 inches.

3) the ceiling in the hall needs to be higher than 8 inches because of the window.

4) the space that can not be used because of the bump out in the bedroom is 4 inches.

5) I also had the problem of my stair railings. Because I built my stairs, they are wider than the kit stairs.

So the left bookcase has to be greater than 4 inches and the right bookcase has to be less than 3.5 inches. That is why my bookcase is really in 3 parts. Each bookcase side is around 3 3/8 inches and there is a middle section that is filled in with trim so the whole piece is 7.5 inches. If you look closely at the picture of the bookcase, the hinges are not in the middle of the 7.5 inches.

Then there is the backside of the bookcase with the stairs. Because the stairs is 1.5 inches deep and has to swing out, it has to clear the side of the bookcase... like an arc. You might be able to see from the pictures that the bookcase on the right is actually not as deep as the one on the left. This was done to get my 1.5 inches to be partially in the hall side of the wall and partially on the bedroom side to make the arc smaller.

Then there is the hinges. I originally designed the bookcase to use regular hinges but I decided that I did not want the hinges to show. So I went out to garage and rummaged through my husbands stuff until I found these little plastic things called... Coaxial Cable Straps. They are normally used to attach wire cables.

After I started I decide to build a frame around the whole thing and that made it easier to keep square. Now the whole thing comes in and out real easy.