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For a number of years my wife
and I had been collecting quite a few books which were stored just about
everywhere in our house. Last fall we undertook a complete redo of
our family room, complete with a new 5" figured hickory hardwood floor,
a new coffered ceiling and all new red oak baseboards, chair railing and
doors. After completion, we decided it would be really neat if we
could incorporate a new built-in library in the corner of the room to house
the books. We also thought that it would add to the beauty of the
room. We undertook the project, completed it and the photo below
is a shot of that corner of the room.
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It's pretty hard to get an idea
how it looks in the overall appearance of the room, but you can begin to
get an idea from this picture. We think it looks very good in this
setting......what do you think? If you care to find out how I began,
built and completed this rather large project, follow along in the spaces
below.
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Beginnings....
First things first, I measured
the area of the room where we wanted to place the library. With those
measurements in hand, I went browsing the internet for a style that would
fit within the other decor of the room. We didn't really want a contemporary
look or feel and decided to look for something that would be more of a
Shaker look but a little more "trimmed out". I found a picture that
came very close to what we had invisioned and began designing the plans
around that idea using Autocad. Autocad is the software I had used
in my day job before retiring and the software is very familair to me.
It helps to use a CAD program when designing because it lets you see, along
the way, whether things are going to fit properly before you start chopping
into the wood.
I altered the design from
what I saw in the internet pictures somewhat in that we wanted to incorporate
some display shelving on the exposed end of the cases. You can see
those half round shelves in some of the photos on this page.
We decided to use solid quarter
sawn oak throughout instead of veneered plywood because we wanted the end
result to be valued long into the future and wanted the "rays" in the lumber
to really stand out!
Upon completion of all the
drawings, I began putting together a bill of materials list for the quarter
sawn oak. I allowed about 10 percent extra of all the thicknesses
of lumber to make sure that I had enough material and so that I could pick
out the better grain of the wood in certain instances.
No
Turning Back....
With my list in hand, I made
the trip to L.R. Nisley & Sons Hardwoods near Goshen, Indiana to order
the wood. This is an Amish operated shop that sells all types of
rough sawn lumber and millwork and has very good quality products at especially
favorable prices. I ended up ordering roughly $800 worth of material
between four quarter and five quarter stock. I had them plane and
finish sand the material to final thicknesses to save the wear and tear
on my planer and my arms. After having spent the money, there was
no turning back now!
 I
decided to build the entire case in two different sections (upper and lower
units that would eventually become one). The lower unit, which is
described on this page, was designed to have three drawers in the center
and double doors on either side. Inside and behind the doors, the
cabinet was designed to have spaces devided by full depth center shelves.
This can be seen in the photo here on the left.
I started by laying out the drawings
for the lower cabinets and began jointing the edges of the boards that
were to be used for the shelves, ends, center panels and the face frame
for this case. You can see some of these operations in the photos
below.
Lower shelf boards prior
to cutting overall lengths and performing the glueups.
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One of the end panels
after being glued, clamped and waiting to dry.
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Face frame parts after
overall width
cuts laying on my workbench
and waiting for final assembly.
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Some of the shelf parts
after glueups.
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After the end panels and
center sections were dried from the glueups, they were trimmed to the final
overall width, final sanded and set aside to await the preparing of the
sections that were to be used for the top and bottom of the lower case
unit. I then repeated the glueups of the top and bottom panels (one
of which can be seen in the photo on the right side of the page.
Moving
On....
 Next,
I began to cut the lower case face frame parts to their final overall length
and widths. I used pocket screw joinery on the face frame as can
be seen in the photo here on the left.
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You can see the results of the
entire frame which was assembled using this method in the two photos below.
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View showing the back side of
the
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face frame and the pocket screw
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details of the assembled frame.
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View showing the front side
of the
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assembled face frame and laid
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out on the top of my workbench.
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After the completion of
the face frame, I moved on to cutting dados into the inner sides of the
lower case ends and center panels. These were cut to 3/8" deep and
were used to hold the shelving inside the cabinet on both the left and
right sides of the center drawer section. The photo on the right
shows how I set up the guides for my router on one of the panels.
With the dados cut, I began
assembling the ends, center panels and shelving into the basic lower case.
I only glued the front 5 or 6 inches of the shelving into the dado slots
to allow for expansion and contracting with humidity changes. The
face frame was designed to be longer than the main case on the left side
so that I could build in the half round display shelf on that side.
The
face frame was attached to the case by using #20 biscuit joinery. You can
see in the left photo below what the case looked like after the initial
glueup was done and prior to installing the face frame. The picture
on the right (below) is a view of the lower unit after the face frame was
installed and before building in the half round shelf.
 After
the lower case face frame had been installed, I made the floor, top, back,
extra frame pieces and the half-round shelf that was to be used in forming
the end section. I used dados cut into the back panel for the rear
of the shelf and then when I installed the shelf, I used glue on its right
edge as well as 18 guage pin nails from the inside of the case to hold
it in place. Next, I added the extra top and bottom face frame parts
to the existing face frame by cutting the parts to 45° angles on their
ends and continuing around the case at those points. The view of
the completed case (less back) is shown in the view on the right.
 Being
satisfied with the project up to this point, I decided to apply the finish
to this lower half of the unit. Having been told by a fellow woodworking
friend that quarter sawn white oak can have the flecks really "pop out"
with a trick that he learned, I decided to give it a try. The trick
was to use an orange Trans Tint wood dye on the cabinetry prior to applying
the final coloring stain. I mixed up a batch and applied it over
the entire surface which is shown here on the left.
 After
the orange tint was dry, I had to lightly sand the surface because the
tint had raised the grain slightly. When completed, I applied a coat
of dark walnut stain over the tinted case. You can see from right
photo that this approach really did make the flecks of the quarter sawn
oak "Pop out" just as my friend said that it would. I then put on
two coats of clear urethane top coating.
Doors
& Drawers.....
Time to
move on to the next step which was to construct the doors and the drawers
for this lower unit. I chose to use Ambrosia Maple for the door panel
inserts. Using the same tint stain and top coat on the stiles and
rails as well as the maple panels, it turned out rather nice, I think!
The Ambrosia Maple panels took on sort of a burgundy look after the finishing
process. I used poplar to construct the drawers using dovetail joinery
and Accuride full extension drawer slides to mount the drawers into the
cabinet. The pictures below show some of the steps for this phase
of the project.
That's it for the lower unit.
If you are not bored already, the process that I went through contructing
the top unit of this library can be viewed here.
Dave
dave@oldaveswoodshop.com
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