Home Office Shelves
Super Home Office Shelves
After you build the desk top you are definitely going to be impressed with the strength and appearance. You can build very strong wall shelves using the same materials and techniques. The key is figuring out how to suspend them. I will cover this in a moment.
Most rooms have eight foot ceilings. Standard computer monitors sit about 18 inches high. If the work surface is 30 inches off the floor this means that the absolute bottom of a wall shelf would be 48 inches off the floor. Sounds too low to me so lets go 50 inches. If you sit in a chair you will see that this is a very convenient height to reach the first shelf while sitting. You will appreciate this in the future.
Since the shelves start at 50 inches off the floor, there is limited vertical space to deal with in a standard room. Plus, you don't want the top shelf too high or else you can't reach it. Thus I have found that a 2 foot high system works perfectly. This puts the top shelf about 75 inches off the floor. Most people can stretch and reach things at this height.
The Method
The shelves I like to build are just boxes. They are 2 feet high and whatever width you want them to be. If they are wider than 5 feet and you have heavy books that will rest in the middle portions of the shelves, you will need vertical supports to stop the shelves from warping. I like to make the sides over lap the top and bottom shelves. When you do this and add the thin wood molding, you do not see any exposed plywood edges. The two foot system allows you to apply adjustable standards on the insides of the box that allows you to add at least one shelf and possibly two.
Hanging Them
I think the best way to hang the box is to use a French cleat. This is a 7 inch wide piece of 3/4 inch plywood that is ripped down the center of its length at a 45 degree angle. The cleat is as long as the shelves are wide. It fits at the inside top of the shelf system. One part is screwed to the wall and the other half is screwed to the inside of shelves. The two resulting pieces look like magnified ends of a wood chisel. Here is a diagram of one. This is a side view and the wall would be to your left and the room side of the shelves are to the right. If you could imagine the lower half of the cleat screwed to a wall by itself, see how it creates a trough? As you slide the top piece down so it touches you can see how the top could not fall down or away from the wall. Pretty clever!
These shelves are simple to do once you build the work surface. If you have any questions simply email me.
Companion Articles: Maximize Small Home Office Space, Home Office Desk Plans, Home Office
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