Browse Forums General Discussion 1 Aug 03, 2009 8:07 pm I'm moving into my new house in South Morang in 10 days time (!) and at this stage I expect to have all 4,000 odd of my books sitting in boxes around me In my current house, I have a whole pile of ugly shelves, in various states of disrepair and bowing, and they are NOT coming with me to the new house. All together, they make up about 10 meters of floor to ceiling shelves, give or take a meter. And they were overflowing... I have only been able to get one quote so far from a cabinet maker for shelving in the new house - I'd like floor to ceiling on two biggish walls in the lounge room, a desk and shelves in the open study and a desk and more shelves in a small-ish upstairs bedroom. No fancy cupboards, doors, drawers or glass doors required. Happy to have basic materials on all the shelves except the loungeroom, with a decent-ish laminate surface for the desks. Has anybody had a similar fit - out done recently that can give me some idea of what is reasonable to pay? The one quote I got was for just over $10,000, and I was hoping for something closer to half of that Failing that, any other suggestions? I don't really want cheap-o stuff for the lounge but its getting to the stage of beggars who can't be choosers! tia Board newbie moving into a new house in South Morang - shiny! (bought off the plan) Re: built in book shelves and desks 2Aug 03, 2009 10:28 pm Hi CrazyCatLady, (its these oriental cats, they drive you there!) I'm having shelves built in during my build - its corner shelves, about 2m each way, so I guess about 4m all up, for $1890 and about 3 1/2m of rough shelving in the garage for OH hobby stuff, for $1200. Floor to ceiling for both. Its a bit more $ than I hoped, but should cover some of our book overflow! And should still be cheaper than decent bookshelves of the same dimensions. Our blog: http://20percenthouse.blogspot.com/ Re: built in book shelves and desks 3Aug 03, 2009 11:06 pm not very expensive compared with your 10 k quote. Ikea billy bookcases might be something to consider they come in a couple of colours including a black/brown and some lighter colours. you can also get an extended additional shelf to extend them but the standard height is 2020 mm high and they are 800 mm wide. Ready to assemble ones.. ikea charge heftily for delivery i found. Dee elle had some slightly better quality ikea ones put in her office as well. ..................................................................................................................... or perhaps some more expensive timber ones.. even those should only be around 350-400 for something of similar size. if you butt them up close together they would look fine. One of the office furniture supply places near me said they would even make bookcases to suit if i wanted a specific size. even they would probably only be a little more perhaps 500-600 per m. ................................................................................................................. cheaper than ikea you could compromise as i ended up doing and get extra cheap $99 ones from officeworks. 7 bookcases 2020 x 800 and 2 cheap 4 drawer filing cabinets 148 each , delivered was just under $45 for the lot (ready to assemble though) Re: built in book shelves and desks 5Aug 04, 2009 1:34 pm I used rows of Billy bookcases for years and now have built ins. Of course the built ins cost way more, but they are worth every cent. I have 10-foot ceilings and the floor-to-ceiling shelves 30cm depth, maybe 7 (?) shelves plus backing etc came out to about $900 per meter of run. Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves. - Dale Carnegie Re: built in book shelves and desks 7Aug 04, 2009 7:50 pm I've faced similar issues and never found an economic (cheap) solution. A metre of shelving will hold an average of 25 hard cover books of uniform size (fiction, biography etc.) so for 4,000 books you need some 160 metres of shelving. In a house with a standard ceiling height you can get 8 shelves floor to ceiling, or 200 books. So you need around 20 metres of wall space shelved floor to ceiling. That's a big slice of the wall space in a modern home. If your books are of varying sizes, e.g., large numbers of gardening or cook books of different heights you need a lot more shelves. On that basis, even ignoring your desks etc, your quote of $10k works out to about $62 per metre of shelving. Not cheap but probably not unreasonable if it's good quality materials. The problem with books is that they really need shelves no longer than 800-900mm and 30mm to 40mm thick to prevent bowing. Do that in timber, or even MDF, and it's simply never going to be cheap, even if you build them yourself. Personally, after 40 years collecting and some 5-6,000 books I'm finally coming to the conclusion that it's time to get rid of a large percentage of them. Unfortunately, the advent of Amazon, AbeBooks and eBay has decimated the resale value of used books. Re: built in book shelves and desks 8Aug 04, 2009 7:58 pm dstann You could raise the money by selling a couple of thousand of your books. That would save you in moving costs as well. Why do you have 4,000 books? www.themaxbuild.blogspot.com forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=20717&start=300 www.leahspaperpassion.blogspot.com Re: built in book shelves and desks 9Aug 04, 2009 8:01 pm dstann You could raise the money by selling a couple of thousand of your books. That would save you in moving costs as well. Why do you have 4,000 books? good question...probably a cross between the legacy of moving every couple of years as a child, and being forced to give things away to charity most times, and a deep and abiding love of books! a significant proportion are collectible things, but many others are just stories that I love. I also have a decent number of cookery books and interesting books about non-fiction stuff that I've picked up over the years eg music and australian history books. i guess some people collect CDs, DVDs, shoes or clothes. my thing is books the desire for nice sturdy shelves is partially about preserving the more collectible ones, but also the fact that they end up forming a significant component of my interior decoration, vis - Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Board newbie moving into a new house in South Morang - shiny! (bought off the plan) Re: built in book shelves and desks 11Aug 06, 2009 11:04 pm I agree with all the above recommendations, but if you want to mix it up a bit, interior styling (sortof) then make a few of them like these shelves, more asthetic than practical, and cheap at $49 per shelf... http://www.ikea.com/au/en/catalog/products/60103632 A thankful person is a happy person. [/color]My hobby design blog: http://aviewondesign.blogspot.com/ Re: built in book shelves and desks 12Aug 07, 2009 10:46 am I did a compromise and bought 6 identical bookcases (got unstained so I could stain them myself) then had a cabinet maker attach them to the wall and "build them in" above and below and along the side. It was a lot lot cheaper and the look was identical. Building Upside down house in Wantirna VIC Current Stage: Procrastination... it's just all too hard.... Blog: http://thereluctantbuilder.blogspot.com/ Re: built in book shelves and desks 13Aug 07, 2009 4:49 pm dstann You could raise the money by selling a couple of thousand of your books. That would save you in moving costs as well. Why do you have 4,000 books? Whats wrong with 4000 books I'm sure we have about that many here, the hallway is about half of what it should be because of the bookshelves down both sides. On topic, I'm going to be putting up some shelves in the spare room to gain some space in the house. Thats the plan, I'm sure all I'm actually doing is making more space for more books Re: built in book shelves and desks 14Aug 07, 2009 5:22 pm StuRat dstann You could raise the money by selling a couple of thousand of your books. That would save you in moving costs as well. Why do you have 4,000 books? Whats wrong with 4000 books I'm sure we have about that many here, the hallway is about half of what it should be because of the bookshelves down both sides. On topic, I'm going to be putting up some shelves in the spare room to gain some space in the house. Thats the plan, I'm sure all I'm actually doing is making more space for more books You partially answered your own question, you hallway is about half what it should be. I guess I don't like clutter. So having all those books would be a nightmare for me. I read most books only once, then I give them to friends or charity. I don't see the point in keeping something I won't use again. I mean 4000 books, how many do you actually look at regularly? Re: built in book shelves and desks 15Aug 07, 2009 5:57 pm ozkarnak I did a compromise and bought 6 identical bookcases (got unstained so I could stain them myself) then had a cabinet maker attach them to the wall and "build them in" above and below and along the side. It was a lot lot cheaper and the look was identical. what a great idea got a pic??? progress viewtopic.php?f=31&t=20401 sculptures viewtopic.php?f=36&t=26607 pole trouble viewtopic.php?f=3&t=25988 Re: built in book shelves and desks 16Aug 07, 2009 9:22 pm dstann StuRat dstann You could raise the money by selling a couple of thousand of your books. That would save you in moving costs as well. Why do you have 4,000 books? Whats wrong with 4000 books You partially answered your own question, you hallway is about half what it should be. I guess I don't like clutter. So having all those books would be a nightmare for me. I read most books only once, then I give them to friends or charity. I don't see the point in keeping something I won't use again. I mean 4000 books, how many do you actually look at regularly? Re: built in book shelves and desks 17Sep 18, 2014 2:33 pm Great idea and very easy to use only problem very hard to remove and replace with something if you want a change. Re: built in book shelves and desks 18Sep 19, 2014 12:13 pm try kitchen makers as well. my huge book case and entertainment unit was made by the same company that did my kitchen . they also made the study area. i used a cabinet maker to make the huge bookshelves and unit in the retreat area. for this one it was about 2500 and include a smaller bookcase and cabinet also shelves in dining area. i also always get three quotes Re: built in book shelves and desks 19Sep 19, 2014 6:03 pm That's a LOT of books! You're right to need so much storage! Not sure how good you are with your hands but if you really want the easiest (and cheapest) way to get all of this settled, I'd suggest moving the books to a storage unit. Unless you WANT them to be displayed, you may want to give a shot at designing your own cupboards? Good timbre and a drill is all you're really going to need to do a nice home-made shelf done up, and just the way you want it to be done too! Start measuring and try it out. Let us know if it works out and good luck! Re: built in book shelves and desks 20Sep 19, 2014 9:52 pm This was a unit I built for a customer a couple of years back. She used it as library and office. There's a printer in the cupboards below. Once all the books went on and were sorted it looked very smart. Sorry for the poor picture quality. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Accessible Carpentry & Cabinets accessiblecarpentry@gmail.com accessiblecarpentry.com.au https://www.facebook.com/pages/Accessible-Carpentry-Cabinets/583314911709039 Basically. If the shelves are fixed then they will be screwed in just the same as the rest of the carcass. To re move the screws you need to remove that section of… 3 5191 DIY, Home Maintenance & Repair We purchased a 1960s property that is on timber stumps mostly, and a newer section is on concrete stumps. We had a building inspection initially and they reported some… 0 12709 Strong enough for what? For linen, absolutely. To climb on, no. I've got similar shelving in my garage and it holds a decent amount of weight. 900 wide shelves will carry… 1 4166 |