I am totally in love with this awesome new blog I stumbled upon, Knock Off Wood. Ana is a homeschooling, stay-at-home-mom, obsessed with furniture. The coolest part is she posts here plans on her blog for free! And almost all of her plans are knock-offs of Pottery Barn, Land of Nod, Crate & Barrel, Restoration Hardware, Williams & Sonoma, etc. Maybe I should say that again… FOR FREE! :) She builds her plans in Google Sketch-up (love that application) and uses very simple techniques so anyone can build them. Did I mention that she’s also a super cool person too??? I just know DIY Network or HGTV is going to snatch her up and make her famous!
Todd putting in two permanent shelves
She has an awesome Facebook fan page, a Bragging Board on Flickr for fans to post photos of their fabulous projects and a Suggestion Board on Flicker group for suggesting design plans to Ana. I took her Pottery Barn Bedford 3×3 bookcase plans and drew up a 2×5 version in Google Sketch-up.
Here are photos of our bookcase in the works. I’ll post more photos as soon as it is finished! :)
Since this is a tall, narrow bookcase, not all of the shelves could be removable. We needed to have two permanent shelves to give the bookcase stability so it wouldn’t bow in the middle. On the 3×3 Pottery Barn bookcase, all of the shelves are removable.
Mom cutting shelves
Since I’m painting this off-white to match the moldings in Lindsey’s bedroom, we are building it with MDF. Pottery Barn’s website says they use MDF for their white version, but they use plywood and veneers for the black or espresso versions. It’s been interesting working with MDF though… It’s SOOOOOOO strong, really heavy, very easy to cut, but interesting to drill and screw into. It doesn’t like tapered wood screws or it splits and it squeels like crazy if you don’t predrill deep enough.
Todd left the project to me just after we got the plywood glued and screwed onto the back. So it’s up to me to finish it. Woo hoo! Must mention – did you know most bookcases use CARDBOARD on the back??? Yuck!
Mom cutting the inside supports
Lindsey had some fun with my iphone camera the other day while I was cutting all of the removable shelves. Our miter saw isn’t big enough to cut the shelves (wish list item: 10″ or 12″ compound SLIDING miter saw) so I had to cut all of the shelves with the circular saw. I don’t like that thing. It makes me nervous!!!!! But every single removable shelf is PERFECT. :) Yay! The circular saw makes me nervous because it’s harder to control…
Then I used our miter saw (much safer and easier to use) to cut the inside supports (they go on the top and the bottom of the bookcase to keep everything nice and square.
Not sharing any more photos than that! :) I got the inside supports glued and screwed in last night and also drilled the shelf-pin holes for all of the removable shelves (they all line up perfectly). I’m so excited with how it is turning out!!! Now all I need to do is putty all of the holes, sand the whole thing and then prime and paint it. THEN I’ll post more photos! :)
