How to Build Custom Bookcases with Built-In Desk

today i'm going to show you how to transform a room with built-in bookcases and an integrated desk all right so here's the room that we're starting with and this is just a huge hodgepodge of different types of furniture that we just kind of accumulated in this room now my son is really into legos he loves origami and we need a place for him to be able to do all those things and to display the things that he's built so we're going to have floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a desk in there we're going to get rid of all this and have a nice cohesive look that's going to be a great place for him to build all right let's get started by breaking down some wood [Music] one thing i like to do to keep organized while i'm breaking down a lot of sheet goods is to use sticky notes to label them so i've got my whole cut list and i have the part numbers and i know that this is going to be one a part and so i'll write that down on a sticky note but i'll also write an arrow to show which side is the factory edge that way i'll know what to reference when i go over to the table saw and like the offspring taught us in the mid 90s you got to keep them separated [Music] all right i've got the sides of the bookcases all four of them now and they are all cut to final length but now i'm going to cut them to find a width on the table saw and the thing about marking the factory edge is you always want to have that edge against the fence to make sure that you have a straight established edge but what i like to do is cut it a little wider on the first pass and then flip it around and then use that freshly cut edge to cut it to final width and that's going to give me two perfectly clean sides on every piece so these other two sheets of plywood are going to become the shelves top and bottom so i need to get to cutting that it's going to take me a while but for you it'll just be a quick montage [Music] all right i've got all my shelves cut to size now and we can start to do some of the joinery i'm going to use pocket hole assembly to make it nice and easy and we can fill those up and cover it up and paint it but no matter what joinery you use when you look at the shelves look down the length of them and see which way they bow this one bows like this so i'm going to make sure that this is the top because shelves might tend to sag over time so you want to start out with the hump on the top and the face frame will straighten it up later but if you start with a sag it's harder to pull that up so i'm going to go ahead and do three pocket holes on each of the sides of these and then we can get to some sanding and assembly [Music] now here's a tip to make things a bit faster is to sand your panels before assembly because it's going to be a lot easier just to have access to the whole panel versus when it's contained within the sides so i'm going to do that with my merka sander here this is a six inch sander which makes it fast also my craig foreman is awesome at doing speed so adding tools to your arsenal that are going to allow you to speed up your workflow is a great way to be more efficient in the shop and you can get both of these at woodcraft woodcraft has been an amazing sponsor of the channel they have basically everything you can think of and need for woodworking tools and supplies i'll have links below in the description to all the tools that i'm using today and you can check those out at woodcraft.com [Music] all right we're ready for assembly and my wide angle lens is making it look even longer but these boards are huge it is much larger than what my bench can handle so i've got this sheet of melamine here that was uh from some concrete work i did and i can just slide this right on top so if you do have a piece of mdf or melamine or something like that that's nice and flat it works great to give you extra space for assembly i cut two spacers which is actually going to be the distance between the shelves but i'm also going to use those to put on the bottom these little craig corner clamps are going to come in super handy because this is going to be a bit unwieldy someone put a long clamp here at the bottom and these top clamps are really just holding that shelf in place and the sides up but i'm going to use this spacer to position this bottom shelf three quarters of an inch from the bottom of the sides then i can lock it in place now i can secure those bottom holes and then work my way up to the top using that spacer to make sure the bottom is totally aligned now i can use these spacers and put them down at the bottom to register off that bottom shelf and then i can locate the next shelf and each one after that this will make sure you get perfect spacing all the way up but don't forget to add in a little extra for the undersized plywood thickness or you'll eventually have a larger gap at the top than you should [Music] we're gonna have to go right to ludacris speed [Music] oh it's a big boy i've got the cabinet flipped over now and i will need to put on some cleats i'll have a cleat under the middle shelf as well as under the top shelf and then we will use that to attach it to the wall so i ripped down some strips off of the extra pieces of the shelving so it's gonna be the exact width and then i cut some pocket holes on the back side and these will sit right underneath and get attached but before i do that i need to fill these holes i'm actually going to be using some bondo this works really well and i'm just going to mix it up in small portions fill up all the holes then we can sand it and put in the cleats so if you've never used bondo it comes in two parts it's the putty and then there is a little cream hardener on it and i'm going to mix a bunch of batches of this because it dries really quickly and then we can just apply it right into the holes you want to definitely kind of leave it proud because you're going to sand it back hey it's uh me from 10 minutes in the future do not just clob it on so a better way to do it is to come in and just not try to get it all in there at once and scrape it flush now it's not going to be completely filled but you come back with a top coat and then squeegee it off nice and flush [Music] with all the holes filled now i can go ahead and put the back cleats on so i'm going to put this one on right underneath the middle shelf and another one up there at the top [Music] all right now we can flip it back over so that the top is up and if you don't get to the gym enough like me just pause here and three sets of 12 should do the work you'll be good exhausted for the face frame i'm gonna be using this one by two material and we're just gonna put this along the sides and the front so it's gonna look great but it's also going to shore up the entire assembly and give a lot of strength to the shelves the left side of this bookcase is going to be against the left wall and whenever you're going against a wall it's not going to be a perfect fit so you want to leave some room for scribing and i'm going to back bevel the underside of this here's the profile that we're left with it makes it a lot easier to scribe this and fit it to a wall so i'll have the quarter inch on the left side and on this side i'm just going to leave it a little bit proud so i can sand the trim back to the cabinet now i can cut all my pieces to size and assemble the frames [Music] [Music] so now we've got a nice smooth edge on the outside and actually the scribe side is over there now but the last thing to do is just fill all the little gaps the nail holes with some wood putty and get everything seamless and sanded down so that it's ready for paint then i can make a whole nother one [Music] it's time to start prepping the bottom the bookcase because it's so tall i'm gonna have it on a base that goes underneath because if i made it full size you can't tilt it up because you'll hit the ceiling uh if you ever had that issue you'll not do it again so i cut down some of the off cuts from the shelving this will fill in the bottom of the cabinet so that it can sit flush on the base and moving these things around is half the challenge of the whole project after you get it going just use leverage and i've got the furniture dolly to help move it around the shop but uh whatever you do don't get caught underneath this thing if it's falling just let it go didn't kill myself that's a plus the base is gonna be the exact same dimensions as the bottom of the bookcases so i'm just going to use some of this leftover plywood rip it down super simple construction let's get them whipped up [Music] all right before we get into painting i need to make a few more pieces for the center that's going to connect the bookcases and then a shelf and then i'm also going to make a desk these are all going to be very simple construction just the three-quarter sheet of plywood and then some trim either this one by four or a one by two for the shelves and the desk [Music] mailman so this is the piece for the desktop and it's gonna be very similar to the shelf and the bridge uh it's gonna have this front trim piece on it again to give it that nice look but it's also to give it protection because i'm sure it's gonna get banged up and bruised but not only are we gonna have it on the front we're gonna have that on the side because the desk is gonna extend out from the bookshelves and so this plywood edge would be exposed if we didn't wrap that as well [Music] all right we are now ready for paint and as you can see these things are massive and i am going to spray them now i would love to spray them outside but we're in tennessee it's august it's humid and it's crazy hot out there so spraying out there is not an option so i'm gonna grab some plastic drop cloths do my best dexter impression and wall off this area right here so i can try to keep down all the overspray and everything and hopefully we'll get a great paint job [Music] all right i'm ready for the finish coat and right now i have switched it because i found it's way easier to paint it on its side than standing straight up you know painting vertically into the side is a lot harder than just painting down below you don't paint the backside and the shelves and then flip it around and paint the face frames just a lot easier this way though it does take up more room let's go [Music] [Applause] [Music] now before we get into installing the cabinets i do want to paint this wall so you can decide whether you just want the piece to stand alone as a different color but we're going to integrate it into an entire accent wall and have the rest of the wall be the same color as the cabinets over the years of painting this room the door frame on this wall has actually gotten a lot of spillover because the prep was not done properly so today we're going to get help from scotch painters tape a sponsor today's video to prep like a pro and we're going to reestablish some nice crisp lines here on the trim as well as around the rest of the accent wall so that it looks really good with the bookcases i painted a heavy coat on the side of the door trim to cover up all that overspill and then i went around the room and taped off the ceiling corners and the rest of the trim now scotch brand has a whole family of tapes designed specifically for different surfaces and applications scotch blue sharp lines painters tape is perfect for this type of job and it's going to give me those crisp lines i'm looking for now to get the best performance make sure that you have clean and dry surfaces and bed the tape firmly at the edge now for best results wait 30 to 60 minutes to allow the tape to best adhere to the surface that it's applied to after the waiting i cut in around the edges while susan came behind me and rolled the wall working together we made short work of this and after 24 hours i used scotch delicate surface painters tape on that freshly painted door frame now it's low adhesion so it's not going to pull off the paint but it still locks out the seepage and gives me that fresh clean line that i wanted now once the paint is dry to the touch you can remove both of the tapes the same way peeling it back at a 45 degree angle to reveal your crisp lines i'll have a link below in the description for the sharp lines and delicate surface painters tapes and thanks to scotch painters tape for being a sponsor today's video so the install starts with putting in these little toe kick bases that i have and we are going to be going straight onto the carpet basically because of the little footwell area that's gonna be underneath the desk it would just be weird to notch around that in the carpet and make it look right so what i need to do is get these bases in but because they're on carpet i'm gonna have to put the cabinets up in place to see how much they're going to compress down and make sure that i can get everything level not only each one but across both of them and i'll use a large level to get that done i can take off the baseboards and get these up to the wall because i'm going to secure them against the wall to make everything locked in place and then we can put the cabinets on top for the install and it'll work just right [Music] i got the cabinet dry fit up here on the base and as i'm looking at the fit uh unfortunately we do have some gaps probably to be expected because walls are just not straight but there's a small gap at the top and then a larger gap at the bottom when i have this plumb and level and when you look on the inside same thing the wall slopes away so there's some large gaps between that back edge now unfortunately i'm not gonna be able to really caulk that and cover that up so what i'm actually gonna do is put a quarter inch back on these and i went ahead and painted it the same color as the cabinet and then that way you won't see any of the gaps on the interior and we'll need some trim here on the sides to cover up the gaps not a big deal you'll probably have to do that on your install as well because walls just aren't straight on the right side cabinet we were actually going to be covering an outlet so i did make a little cutout for that and we'll have a little hole and a grommet in the side to run cables for the desk [Music] now the biggest pain that you're probably going to run into like i am is getting these cabinets so that they are actually level and plumb to each other because this wall kind of runs off to the side so if i put them back up flat then this one's going to curve out and the trim across the top is not going to work so get yourself a large level and when you put it up against the faces it should be flush across both of those fronts that's when you know that the cabinets are flush with each other and then we can run the bridge across the top so the bridge and the shelf i'm going to be using some cleats here i'm gonna go ahead and install the rest of this and put the trim in it's gonna be a rough process just believe me go with it and just keep going until you get everything level and then you can secure everything in place [Music] all right we've got all the pieces installed and it is really looking awesome this thing is massive so to finish this out what i need to do is put some trim on so i'm going to be going with some trim up top for kind of a crown molding style look as well as some around the base and then to cover up the pieces here if you want plans to build your own built-in bookcases and desk i do have them available there's a link down below in the description you can check out and we appreciate your support now let's go ahead and get started on this trim [Music] and there we go this thing turned out absolutely amazing now we did style it more like a trendy office but as soon as this is done we're gonna put my son's legos and origami in there and he is going to absolutely love it if you want plans for your own built-in bookcases i've got a link down below in the description for the plans and if you want to check some more videos out on storage and organization for the home you can check it out right there i want to give big thank you to those folks that have been joining the ftbt builders club until next time guys get out there and build something awesome

Channel: Fix This Build That

Views: 527,912

Keywords: Built-in bookcases, built in bookcases, diy bookcases, diy built-ins, built-in desk, built in desk., floor to ceiling bookcases, how to build bookcases, full wall bookcases, bookcase, built ins, built-ins, woodworking, woodworking projects, diy, how to, diy project, fixthisbuildthat, fix this build that, ftbt

Id: z6M-RXpQixA

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 22 2021