We needed storage for the my office – a place for books, but also a closed area with doors for storing folders, files, and other things that you don’t want to look at. There was room for two small drawers in each cabinet as well beneath the open book shelf area, giving it an overall nice, symmetrical look.
I designed this matching pair of built-in bookshelves to create the storage space we needed without filling the room too much. We had empty space on either side of the door that goes out to the balcony, which seemed like an ideal place to put two matching book cabinets. They’re designed as built-ins to maximise space utilisation, and also because the wall is crooked (it’s an old house), so we can close the gap between the wall and the cabinet and avoid having to look at two big gaps.
I used solid 18mm three-ply pine for this project. For most of my projects I prefer working with hardwood, but this cabinet design is more modern cabinetry with a mostly flat design. Solid wood at these dimensions is much more likely to warp without very careful construction, and also these cabinets needed a lot of material. We wanted to paint them dark grey anyway, so pine 3-ply was a good choice. It’s also incredibly easy to work with, lighter than classic birch ply, and in contrast to other sheet material like MDF or particle board, it’s at least still solid wood.
The cabinet doors are filled with Viennese Braid, which I’ve used on other projects and is a very easy and elegant door frame filling.
Overall we love these book cases, and they are solid enough to last for decades.
