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The inau­gur­al project to fea­ture on Every­day Mod­ern came to me whilst shop­ping for my first stu­dio apart­ment in the big city.  Dri­ving across the empti­ness that com­pris­es cen­tral Wash­ing­ton between Spokane and Seat­tle, I obsessed about find­ing a way to not only house my ridicu­lous­ly over-sized col­lec­tion of books in a 500 square foot apart­ment (that also need­ed to serve as a home for two humans and two grey­hounds), but also cre­ate a sense of divi­sion with­in a one room dwelling.

After count­less hours and sleep­less nights, I had men­tal­ly woven togeth­er plumb­ing pipes, fenc­ing parts, and OSB to cre­ate a Bomb-Proof Mod­u­lar Shelv­ing Sys­tem.  This shelv­ing sys­tem would house all of my books, and grow with us; leav­ing just that one oth­er thing that I need­ed to do — build it.

Since I first con­struct­ed this shelv­ing sys­tem over three years ago, I have had a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent ver­sions resid­ing in my apart­ment.  This post will focus on the Wall Anchor con­struc­tion (using OSB shelves or melamine shelves), to see the Ceil­ing Anchor con­struc­tion, kind­ly vis­it this oth­er post.

Your first order of busi­ness will be to get the stuff, all of which you can find at your local Home Depot (and no, to date, I haven’t received an endorsement…).

Tool Belt:

  • A Bud­dy
  • Screw Gun
  • Cres­cent Wrench (and one for your friend)
  • Ham­mer
  • Lev­el
  • Skil Saw
  • Clamps
  • Hack Saw with a blade to cut pipe
  • Foam Sand­ing Block (to sand down any rough edges on the OSB, not need­ed for Melamine)

Required Available Funds:

  • 6 Shelf Wall Anchor (melamine): $269.84
  • 6 Shelf Wall Anchor (osb): $237.70

Shopping List:

  • 2            1 ¼“x10’ Gal­va­nized Plumb­ing Pipes (have these cut and rethread­ed so you have two pieces that are about 20″ and two pieces that are 100″ – but, if you have stan­dard 8′ ceil­ings, you should have the longer pieces cut and rethread­ed to be 74″)
  • 1–2        1  5/8“x8’ Alu­minum Fence Post
  • 4            1 ¼” Gal­va­nized Plumb­ing Flanges
  • 2            1 ¼” Gal­va­nized Plumb­ing T‑junctions
  • 2            1 ¼” Gal­va­nized Plumb­ing 90 degree elbows
  • 4            1 ¼” Gal­va­nized Plumb­ing Nip­ples (If you want your shelves clos­er to the wall, use 8″-10″ nipples)
  • 12          1 ¼” Elec­tri­cal Con­duit Strap
  • 12          Adjustable Wood Adapter Fence Clamp*
  • 1            4’x8’x3/4″ OSB OR 3- 8’x11 ¼“x3/4″ Melamine Shelves (aes­thet­ic is total­ly up to you – use OSB for a more indus­tri­al look, and melamine for a clean­er min­i­mal­ist look)
  • 1            Pack­age Pain in the Ass Melamine Iron-on Side Strip­ping (not need­ed for OSB)
  • 24          #10 Pan-head Sheet Met­al Screws
  • 16          Lag Screws (or some oth­er bomb proof method of anchor­ing these to the wall, this will depend on what your house is built of, just make sure the screws fit through the holes in the flanges)
  • 2            2“x2“x3/4″ Wood­en Blocks to sup­port the 1 1/4″ gal­va­nized pipe**

* Can be found in the alu­minum fenc­ing sec­tion of the store
** I cut mine out of some scrap OSB – they hard­ly show, so they don’t have to be fan­cy style.

Things Organized Neatly layout

Get Down to It:

Now that you’ve acquired all of the nec­es­sary goods to pro­duce this mod­ern won­der of shelv­ing excel­lence, it’s time to get down to business.

Exhib­it A — this is what the end of Step 1 looks like.

Step 1:  Gath­er up all of the gal­va­nized love­li­ness that com­pris­es your plumb­ing parts.  Con­nect the 90-degree elbows to the tops of each of the longest 1 1/4″ gal­va­nized pipes and con­nect the t‑junctions to the bot­tom.  Next, grab your nip­ples (yeah, I went there), and con­nect a nip­ple to each of the 90-degree elbows and t‑junctions (see Exhib­it A), and then put a flange on the oth­er end of each nip­ple.  Fin­ish up with Step 1 by con­nect­ing the 20″ 1 1/4″ pipes to the bot­tom of the t‑junction.  This all makes a lot more sense if you just take a peek at the photo.

 

 

Exhib­it B — these pipes are struc­tural­ly mount­ed to the wall and can oblig­ing­ly sup­port the weight of a pole dancer

Step 2:We have now reached the point in our rela­tion­ship where peo­ple get all law­suit hap­py, so all I’m going to say is find a way to attach these flanges to your wall in a struc­tural­ly sound way.  The pipes need to be spaced apart just a hair wider than the width of your shelf.  Insert legal jar­gon here — Every­day Mod­ern and it’s affil­i­ates does not assume respon­si­bil­i­ty for the injury or dam­age to per­sons or pre­cious things because the book­shelf fell down from lack of struc­tur­al inge­nu­ity on the part of the builder.  Said builder under­takes this project with full knowl­edge that if they fail to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the anchor engi­neer­ing, they will like­ly die because the book­shelf will inevitably top­ple over on top of them.  On that cheery note, we move on to Step 3.

Exhib­it C — shelf to brack­et consociation

Step 3: Begin by dis­as­sem­bling the fence brack­ets.  You will need only the L‑shaped brack­et and the nuts and bolts, (you can just throw away the C‑shaped part, or save it for lat­er cre­ativ­i­ty!).  Attach the L‑shaped brack­ets to both ends of the shelves.  For your con­ve­nience, there are handy pre-fab­ri­cat­ed holes in the brack­ets, so just drill the screws in and you’re cook­ing.  When you get the brack­ets attached, test to make sure the shelves fit between the pipes.  Once con­firmed, pro­ceed to attach all brack­ets to all shelves — this will make it way eas­i­er when you’re con­tort­ing your­self into down­ward-fac­ing-dog to get all of them mount­ed on the poles.

 

Exhib­it D — this is a one-shelf mod­u­lar system.

Step 4: And now the moment that we have all been bat­ing our breath for: mod­u­lar cus­tomiza­tion!  Deter­mine how high you want your first shelf, and cut a piece of fence pipe to that length.  Once you’ve got your cus­tom cut pipe, low­er the first shelf into posi­tion, and cen­ter the fence pipe under the shelf for moral and struc­tur­al support.

Exhib­it E — shelf hard­ware mount­ing detail

Now is the time to kind­ly request assis­tance from your anx­ious­ly wait­ing bud­dy. Polite­ly ask them to grab one of the elec­tri­cal con­duit straps and a cou­ple of the fence brack­et nuts and bolts that we set aside ear­li­er.  They should bolt the clamp around the pipe and through the shelf brack­et, while you per­form a series of awe-inspir­ing pilates moves to keep the shelf lev­el and the fence pipe plumb amidst the hor­ri­bly exe­cut­ed wrench­ing from your bud­dy.  It should look some­thing like Exhib­it E now.  Be sure to keep an eye on your lev­el, you may find it use­ful to gen­tly tap the shelf into lev­el using a ham­mer.  Your friend should tight­en the nuts on both sides of the shelf as far down as they can.  You’ll notice that the con­duit clamp starts to get a lit­tle dis­fig­ured, but that’s okay.  After three years and five dis­as­sem­blies, my con­duit straps are still hold­ing strong in their amend­ed form.

 

Exhib­it F — F is for Finished!

Step 5: Repeat Step 4 until you’re fin­ished.  Make sure that you keep the fence poles as close to cen­ter as pos­si­ble and this will allow the weight of the shelves to trans­fer to the floor and pre­vent ass-sag, (you’ll notice that one of the poles is slight­ly off cen­ter on the exam­ple pho­to and that is to accom­mo­date an antique wood­en box of draft­ing sup­plies that we keep on the shelf (this has­n’t real­ly seemed to be an issue as far as struc­tur­al integri­ty goes, but if you’re wor­ried, just keep them all centered).

 

Step 6: Share this love­ly project with all of your friends, for good­ness sakes, you just got  an awe­some free how-to.  Oh, and please feel free to re-pub­lish, but give me cred­it for my work when you do!