Looking for creative ideas for storing & accessing my books.

DiscussieBookcases: If You Build/Buy Them, They Will Fill

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Looking for creative ideas for storing & accessing my books.

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1skittles
jan 22, 2012, 5:31 pm

I moved last year & most of my books are still in boxes... generally inaccessible unless I want to unpack the box to see what's on the lower levels.

I've thought of underbed boxes making one level of books, but I'd have to pull the boxes out to see/browse them. Also, my bed isn't a big one.

I could use a few dresser drawers, but that would only work for 100 or so books.

There are the invisible shelves for the walls, but they only hold a half dozen or so books & really wouldn't work for paperbacks, just hardcovers. (I have lots of both)

I'm looking for creative ideas, such as putting my Viking history & fiction along side a few Scandinavian art & model ships.

More ideas such as hiding in plain sight in themes or hiding them under the bed or along the ceiling. (Yes, I'm desperate, and tall)

Please throw ideas at me... throw books, too, but I'm running out of space. (yes, I like the bookshelves on the stairway, but there are no stairs here)

Thanks, everyone, I know the group has lots of great ideas.

2Morphidae
jan 22, 2012, 5:45 pm

I don't know if this helps, but we've had to store our books in boxes as well. We number the boxes and put the number in the tag field of each book. That way if we are looking for a book or want to see what is in a box, we just check LT.

3karhne
jan 22, 2012, 6:20 pm

Damn it. Now you've got me thinking about bookshelves on the ceiling. And I think I know how to do it.

And if I share my idea, are you going to promise not to do anything silly or foolish, like installing it yourself, in some horrible, amateur death trap that I'm going to regret for the rest of my life? Because we are talking about installing hundreds of pound of weight that could conceivably drop on your head and render you unable to read.

4GirlMisanthrope
jan 22, 2012, 7:55 pm

A stack of large art books make a smashing side table to holding your reading glasses and a glass of wine.

5thorold
jan 23, 2012, 5:56 am

>3 karhne:
You could also go the other way: according to Jeanette Winterson in Why be happy when you could be normal? you can fit 42 books per layer under the mattress of a standard single bed (that was in the seventies - small beds might have got bigger since then). That's about one 80cm shelf saved per layer. I imagine it would very soon become unstable, and even sooner uncomfortable, and it wouldn't do the books any good.

6karhne
jan 23, 2012, 7:05 am

>5 thorold: You'd have to overlap on alternate layers to be structurally sound. Work in a coffee table book or two at the corners for a bedside table. I read Oranges are Not The Only Fruit once, and I don't remember anything that useful in it. Not a huge Winterson fan.

I was thinking that you could actually hang shelves from the ceiling if the shelves were a 90 degree angle attached to the ceiling so the point aims at the floor. I would make the long side of the shelf plexi-glass so you can read the titles of the book from the ground. The studs are about 36 inches apart, so the shelves would be more or less what you'd expect. (perpendicular to the studs, and attached at both ends. Probably some sort of brace in the middle, which will require hardware, too.) You'll have to figure the weight of the shelf in addition to the weight of the books (and a huge margin for error, since you're talking about hundreds of pounds of weight). The end result, once the ceiling is covered, would be waves and waves of books.

I'm not actually going to try it, myself, since I'm not tall enough to use it, so I'm not doing the math for supports, but I don't see any reason it wouldn't be doable.

7mart1n
jan 23, 2012, 7:28 am

I'm not convinced about ceiling storage, but it has been tried: http://freshome.com/2008/01/14/ceiling-book-storage-idea/

I've got too many books in too small a room, and have wondered about putting shelving units on wheels/rails so that they slide side-to-side in front of others fixed to the wall, if you see what I mean. Effectively double stacking, but more accessible (I'd have e.g. 3 units on wheels in front of 4 on the wall). Not quite that desperate yet, but it might come to that soon!

8skittles
jan 23, 2012, 8:00 am

#2: It may come to that (numbering the boxes & tagging the books with the box number) but I hope not. I like the visual browsing, but I will be considering your suggestion.

#3 (& 6): I was thinking of running a shelf on the wall very near the ceiling, including over the door & windows. It wouldn't be able to run the entire perimeter of the room, but I might be able to get 15-20 feet of books up there.

#4: I don't have many art books, but I do have two National Geographic Atlases, but a stack of two won't work. I do have a few that might work... I'll check into it.

#5: Under the bed, under the mattress, under the bed frame, and on the floor, in boxes, in a single layer, so I can pull out the box to peruse at my leisure (what leisure??). Another problem is that there really isn't the clearance to pull out the boxes to look at them. (small room & small bed).

#7: I've seen that picture before, but that was in a basement, in the rafters. The basement here is full of spiders & millipedes. To your other suggestion, I would absolutely love an old bookshelving cart to store my books. On wheels & portable. Not very practical in my current situation, but I would love it. The sliding shelves would be awesome, too... gives me ideas, though....

9thorold
jan 23, 2012, 8:31 am

I suspect sliding cases for books would only work reliably if you used industrial-grade bookcases and rails and had a solid concrete floor. Normal furniture components wouldn't stand up to being pushed around with that sort of weight in them, and the movement of an old wooden floor under load might well be enough to distort the rails and tip the whole thing over. Of course, if your building's up to it, you could get a set of those librarian-squasher shelves they use in archives (the parallel ones with a handwheel on the end) and fit a folding bed in one of them. You just have to make sure you pick your bedtime reading before deploying the bed.

If you're in a building with wooden floors, maybe you could remove the ceiling altogether and attach shelves directly to the joists above you to get an effect similar to the link in 7 but without losing headroom? I suppose that would depend on how much you need the ceiling space for pipes, insulation, or whatever.

10macsbrains
jan 23, 2012, 9:05 am

I (sort of) solved this problem by covering all my walls. My dining room table also has a center pedestal with shelves and drawers in it. I didn't redo my bedroom yet, but when I do I'm going to get a captains bed (with drawers underneath) with a bookcase style headboard. I currently have flat tubs filled with books under the bed which I slide out and rotate in order to open them. It is not always easy in the tight space. I use those tubs for low-priority books or moochables.

11Noisy
jan 23, 2012, 11:44 am

>10 macsbrains:
That bookcase-style headboard sounds a good option. If skittles has the room to pull the bed six inches from the wall, then the space that was previously unused on the wall above the bed becomes a candidate bookcase space, with space for a few books down each side at the head of the bed as well.

12mart1n
Bewerkt: jan 23, 2012, 3:49 pm

>9 thorold: I'd be building it from scratch, rather than adapting existing shelving. I was thinking of having a sturdy pedestal base, and guide rails of some sort above. As it happens, a quick spot of googling reveals that there's nothing new under the sun: http://www.wheelshots.com/Woodworking/Sliding-Bookcases. This is remarkably close to what I have in mind, though mine would be a lot prettier!

13macsbrains
jan 23, 2012, 3:40 pm

>12 mart1n: That's a great idea. Since I'd have to replace the closet too, closet doors that doubled as sliding bookcases would be so much more useful than mirrors or the like.

This is the one I've been thinking of getting. There are ones with more book-casey headboards, but already I have some shelving set aside to go above what it comes with.

14alaudacorax
jan 24, 2012, 5:32 am

Am I the only one worrying about skittles being a tall person cramped into a small bed? Priorities!

15skittles
jan 24, 2012, 3:38 pm

#14: I sleep diagonally in a double bed. It works, just, & there's room for the kitty. There has to be room for the kitty.... and some books.... yes, I sleep with books... nothing wrong with that except sometimes I wake up with words imprinted on my face.

#13: macs, I love the bed!! but, the shelves on the headboard need to extend up the wall. and aren't those tubs of books heavy?? Please don't hurt yourself!!

Sliding shelves would only work in the basement & not very well... I'm trying to get the most of the books out of the basement, or at least above flood stage.

When you share a house, compromises must be made... and books smuggled to where they are wanted.

16karhne
jan 24, 2012, 4:55 pm

13>>When I was a kid, a friend's parents had a bed like that, except the middle drawers had been removed to make a tunnel for small children to crawl through. I'm not sure if they used up all the space, or not.

15>>That's why they call it a double bed, isn't it? It'll fit double the number of books? How much do you flood? Would a sump-pump solve your problem, or do you need an ark? What about fold-down shelves? Something like the ladders into some attics... or old garage doors (the ones that are a single panel that lifts up and in. It might need a motor to pull it up and down. Turbo-charged bookshelves.

17thorold
jan 26, 2012, 5:36 pm

>16 karhne:
If you made the "garage door" with the shelves facing into the room, wouldn't it tip all the books out when it lifts?

18karhne
jan 27, 2012, 7:11 am

17>> No, the books would be on what would be the outside of the garage door, if it were on an actual garage. You might need some lipping to keep them from wiggling, but they shouldn't fall off.

You're right, of course, that the positioning of the thing wouldn't be quite the standard bookshelves around the perimeter of the room. It would be more like a divider, down the center of the room, when the shelves were down.

For aesthetics, I would probably want to alternate directions, but for efficiency they'd all point the same direction. Because of the weight of the books, you'd probably need to do it in sections anyway, so you might wind up with alternating directions in a fairly cost-effective sort of a way. I'm also thinking that you'll need a more-powerful than average motor (especially now that so many garage doors have the foam core thing going on) and probably also a counterweight of some kind.

If you really wanted to do the perimeter of the room, you could have a ferris wheel looking thing, that alternates half the books forward, and half the books behind, but it would take a chunk of useable space out of the room. Not that that really matters, if you were just going to use your usable space to store books, anyway. But, if you want to have a family room, garage doors would preserve the area of the room for when you're not reading. That way, the kids have plenty of room to run around snotting and screaming in.

19karhne
jan 27, 2012, 7:14 am

Oh, I see what I said. Up and In. I meant up and into the space between the joists, not up and into the center of the room.

20DaynaRT
jan 27, 2012, 7:20 am

That space above the toilet? Perfect for bookshelves...as long as the bathroom has adequate ventilation.

21dukeallen
Bewerkt: jan 27, 2012, 10:36 am

20> But even with ventilation, wouldn't it get a bit too humid (for books that are keepers) when you shower? Although I do keep my copies of the various Bathroom Readers in there...

22skittles
jan 27, 2012, 11:42 am

#21: most bathrooms do have too much humidity for good "keeper" books.

That's also my current problem. Most of my books are in boxes in a basement! I need to move them upstairs without it looking like the books are taking over! I especially need to get my hardcover books out of the basement & some of my good paperbacks.

and I'm considering doing another purge....

23whynuts2
jan 27, 2012, 9:28 pm

When I was in college my roommate put his overflow of books in the bathtub. I'll be damned if I know or can remember where he or I bathed. Maybe it was just all a bad dream.

Perhaps more civilized arrangement (not sure how much more), may I suggest a take on an arrangement that I saw in a large room with high ceilings (10-12ft?) where they put the bed about 6 ft off the floor with a desk and shelves below. The owners were young and climbed in and out via a ladder. I realize that 6 ft underneath might be a head thumper for a "tall" person and as kitty gets older, she may have a hard time getting into it.

My take for even a low-ceiling room - wish I had thought of this earlier for myself - is to put bookcases that could be 2,3,4 or 5 ft high under the bed (I don't use springs for my bed, I have enjoyed sleeping on very thin foam on a wood board) which would create a loft with considerable shelf space in the middle of the room. Then I would have floor to ceiling shelves on 2 walls next to the bed so the upper shelves would be bedside and headboard shelves. Bookcases of different heights next to the bed could serve as steps in and out of the bed.

24fuzzi
jan 28, 2012, 4:20 pm

We are all NUTS....

...but I love it!

25skittles
jan 29, 2012, 9:52 am

#24: We are book crazy!! and I love it, too.

If I had my way, I'd probably put 4 tall bookcases in the front room on the outside wall. Not so obvious from outside & it would insulate the wall a bit. Then in the extra bedroom where I'm keeping my computer desk & studying stuff, I'd add 3 or 4 more of the tall bookcases. I'd add an extra cabinet & hutch in the dining room for storage & put the most used cookbooks in there.

But that's not possible right now.

So, I look for little ways to inject my books into the 'regular' scheme of things. It will be slow & not always successful.

and I will also look at purging more of my books... **sob**

26fuzzi
jan 29, 2012, 2:32 pm

No! Don't purge! No! No! :sniffle:

But if you insist...I'll take some! ;)

27thorold
jan 30, 2012, 6:18 am

>23 whynuts2:
..."If you give students baths, they'll only keep books in them." :-)

28Keeline
jan 30, 2012, 1:43 pm

27>

And this is why a "bathtub" is a unit of volume measurement in the physical dimensions stats page.

James

29skullduggery
jan 30, 2012, 4:17 pm

Here is another books-in-the-ceiling solution - but this one using ceiling molding that runs around the room looks slightly more realistic than the one in the rafters:

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/look-shelves-near-the-ceiling-65969

30skittles
jan 30, 2012, 4:43 pm

#29: Yes, that similar to what I'm thinking about....

but a link further down the page is also something I've considered, but for books!! Looking in the room, would someone notice??

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/look-a-shelf-over-a-door-61827

(I love AT!! but I need to stay away from it.... too many ideas!! too many GOOD ideas!!_

31Fred_R
jan 30, 2012, 5:51 pm

16, 17, 18 Re Garage Door Shelves

I don't know if anyone is seriously considering this, but that might be pretty tricky to pull off. A typical garage door is counterbalanced by powerful springs that are wound or unwound to calibrate them to a fairly specific weight. Adding or removing a significant amount of books would throw that off. Plus, if those springs get overloaded and break, you DO NOT want to be around if it happens. (Not trying to be a know-it-all or a downer, I just want people to stay safe. Sounds like many of us run enough risk of dying under a pile of books as it is.)

32karhne
jan 31, 2012, 7:20 pm

31>> I think, for the most part, we're enjoying playing with the idea. With motors, counterbalances (I would not use springs.), a track to run it on and a specially designed lightweight bookshelf component, it would be cost prohibitive, to say the least. It might actually be cheaper to build on another room than to fill a basement with this kind of thing.

You're taking the garage door analogy much too literally. The movement would be much like a garage door, but it would in no way be a "typical" garage door. The load is significantly heavier (as you noted), so you wouldn't be able to use any standard parts. A garage door weighs about 250 pounds, and each shelf of books would be heavier than that, six shelves or so per unit, depending on ceiling height, not including the shelf, itself. Then you add your chosen margin for error. 10-15%. If you used garage door parts, you'd never get it off the ground. Tracks would bend, motors would burn out.

I already said that every other word out of my mouth is a menace, and if people were planning it, they have to do their own math.

33whynuts2
feb 5, 2012, 1:04 am

Another way to use the ceiling might be to use a modified fold-down attic ladder. The steps at the top would serve nicely for shelves with the ceiling door holding them at the back. The folding ladders would require some modifications to hold the books in place when they are folded up and unfolded down. The standard design is engineered to support the weight of a large person carrying a fairly heavy load. This should hold the books as well, I would think. The spring which holds it in the ceiling would not hold the door up under the weight of the books, but some other mechanism might be devised - perhaps a pulley system.

34karhne
feb 9, 2012, 8:30 am

33>I do like pulley systems. I was actually just thinking of running pulleys for the garage door thing through water, so that instead of a counterweight, I could use floats. (See? I definitely know how to spend money. Now, I'm installing a pool.) My attic doesn't have a ladder (just a door out of the upstairs bedroom), so I'm trying to remember what attic ladders look like... I was thinking you could also get a variety where the lower steps slide up in front of the upper steps, instead of flipping down.

35thorold
feb 9, 2012, 8:54 am

>34 karhne:
My parents have one of the "steps slide up" type - it's quite awkward to handle even with no weight on the light aluminium ladder. Full of books you'd definitely need some kind of counterweight or spring to help control the sliding.

36skittles
feb 9, 2012, 2:45 pm

Lots of great ideas and I wish that I could use more of them.

I think that I'm going to go the "smuggle them into piles around the rooms until I find that they've taken over all the excess floor space" method.

If I do it (smuggle the books) then it isn't as obvious that I'm encouraging the books to take over the house!!

37karhne
feb 9, 2012, 2:49 pm

35>Pneumatic cylinders. And maybe a latch so they don't start sliding until you're ready for them. My puerile little heart would also want to add sound-effects to the cylinders, so that I could have bookshelves that moo. (Unfortunately, every particle of maturity and restraint I ever had is tied up in other projects right now.) I'd want something to control the noise level, too. Mooing is fine, but aluminum ladder clatter is just not library appropriate.

Then, again, it occurs to me that the problem may not be book storage, but book retrieval. If every book has an RFID tag, you could then program a much-smaller-than-human robot to run between the shelves and retrieve the book you want, and you wouldn't need as much space for the shelves.

38skittles
feb 9, 2012, 3:32 pm

#37: RFID tags!! if I chip my books, then I could lend them in good conscience because I could track them down if they go visiting for too long a time!!!

392wonderY
feb 9, 2012, 3:47 pm

I recently bought a partially finished house. It lacks ceilings, and I'm definitely going to incorporate the idea in #7, perhaps figuring some mechanism to let those shelves float along the joists, and a paint scheme on the underside of the shelving. Happily, the joists appear to be oversized for the load from above; though I should maybe scribble some load bearing calculations.

40ForeignCircus
Bewerkt: feb 12, 2012, 4:21 am

skittle- do you not have space for regular bookcases or are you just trying to minimize using regular bookcases? How many books are you talking about?

I love this one- designed fro DVDs, it would also work for books...
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/look-the-small-space-movie-lov-82514

41resnovae
Bewerkt: mrt 2, 2012, 10:53 am

>23 whynuts2: hopefully, the gym...?

>8 skittles:, 9 I have a low, console-style bookshelf I converted into a TV stand by adding "piano wheels" (round ball-type wheels in brass brackets - I got them at Lowes in the U.S. for a couple of dollars). They wheels let us change the angle on the TV from my husband's "man chair" to the bed. It's actually holding up fairly well under the weight of a 50 lb tv and accessories, and maybe 40 more of books & paper we store inside it. But even rolling it over wood floors, it's not the kind of thing you want to move around more than you have to - it's pretty awkward, and ours is bit top heavy with that TV on top. With books, I'd imagine you'd have to watch for sagging along the bottom of the frame - you'd almost definitely need a shelf with a closed back - and you'd want to keep total weight low enough that the inertia it takes to get it moving doesn't shake books out and onto your head (or, bowl you over once it gets moving). That said, under the right circumstances, it could work... maybe you could do 4 or 5 low shelves like this under a window, and throw a tablecloth over it or something?

>40 ForeignCircus: wow... that is so full of awesome, I'm at a loss for words.