New Shelves
I recently built a new detached room for me to work out of. In the process, I built some custom built-in shelves for records and monitors that I'm pretty happy with. I thought I'd document a little step by step on how i built them.
My wife designed them in AutoCad and decided that dividing them up into three sections, with the middle section being slightly deeper would help break up the space. I started by building in two dividing walls, and then built a base out of 2x6 that I shimmed up to make it as level as possible.
Once the base was done, I wrapped the walls in MDF, and put down the first particle board shelf.
From there, I measured out and hung wall cleats using a laser level. The wall cleats take some of the load, but I also added vertical supports for each shelf to carry the load all the way down to the base. It might be more support than necessary, but records weigh a ton.
Like I mentioned the actual shelves, and the vertical dividers / supports were all cut from particle board. It is a bit rougher (and eventually meant more sanding), but it seems more rigid than MDF.
Once I had a row or two of shelves, it was a lot of repetition getting them cut and installed. The fourth row up from the bottom was built a little taller than the others to accomodate some speakers.
Once all the shelves were in, I started cutting strips for the faceplate. The faceplate was cut from MDF sheets. It made for nice straight lines, and hides the rough edge of the particle board.
Once all the faceplates were cut and installed, I began touching up the joints with drywall mud, and used sanding sealer to attempt to seal up the MDF to get it ready for paint.
I used a bunch of silicone caulk to seal up the edges. Between that and the drywall mud it all started to look pretty seamless.
Then a couple coats of primer, and a couple coats of paint sprayed on.
It was way more work than I anticipated. I was mostly building the shelves in the evenings and on the weekends. It took a few weeks total, but I'm real happy with how they turned out.