We'd been meaning to build these for over a year to replace a bulky entertainment center plus some cobbled together shelving for our TV wall. With a new 32" panel TV that only needed an 8" front-to-back shelf, this looked like a good choice! Since we live in rented housing, we couldn't attach anything to the walls but wanted something large enough to cover an exactly 8' x 8' wall without protruding the 27" into the narrow living room that the old furniture had while being "knock down-able" for future moves. Main problem = no real workspace for 8' uprights.

We finally did it!

My parents have the space and Dad has the tools -- a drill press, forstner bits and a long workbench were pretty essential. We decided to use countersunk 2x4s as uprights. This eliminated the need for pricey cap/acorn nuts while still leaving the all-thread ends 'protected' on the outside and allowing us to put it flush against the wall without causing damage.



Dad was SOOO concerned that there wasn't any way they weren't going to go rhombus and kept trying to over-engineer the project (my husband wasn't so certain, either!) but I stuck to my guns and followed the plans I'd "modified" to my specs -- 92" uprights (so as not to actually wedge against the ceiling), with 3/4" washers plus lock washers and plain old hex nuts in a 1" wide hole countersunk to 1/2" depth, 1x10 shelves and my brother just happened to have salvaged massive amounts of 1/4" all-thread that Dad cut to 12" lengths for us.



Because we needed to fit a 32" wide TV into the center of the whole shebang, we spaced the uprights further out from the center and eliminated a couple of shelves from just that center section...making 8" tall shelves on either side suitable for DVDs.

I also had the brainstorm to use two nail-in furniture "feet" on the bottom of each 2x4 on the front side so as to compensate for the carpet tack strip on the back edge and to make the shelves lean ever so slightly into the wall. I thought we might have to anchor the top of it to the wall, but with the feet, it stands very firm with absolutely no signs of wanting to tip forward! I felt great satisfaction when the almost 150 square inches of friction applied allowed for NO racking -- I could practically climb the end without anything budging!



We now have over 58 linear feet of shelving (with space under for shoes) for that wall that barely protrudes 12.25" into the room for a total cost of about $125! We plan to make at least two more units to accommodate the more than 15,000 books we own that are currently on store bought or cobbled shelving and in boxes plus have display space for our many collections Our only problem...we didn't take into account the depth of the shelf itself -- if you've got 10" between holes, you actually only get 9 1/8" of useable height on the shelf (most hardback books are 9.5" tall) = major bummer! We measured (from bottom) 12", 12", 10", 10", 9", 9", 10", 10" with top shelf at 13" from the ceiling.



(The shelves are only partially populated in the second pic because of our plans to get the other units done soon -- we knew we'd have to have space to move what we DO have on the other wall somewhere while we build)



Sorry for the long description...we're just so excited to have finally done this and how very well it works for us!



