DIY West Elm Inspired Ladder Bookshelf
Here is our last DIY for our master bedroom. It is my favorite because my husband built it. We had this empty wall in our office nook that I knew I wanted shelving in. It is right next to my desk and was just a dumping ground for stuff like my sewing machine and crafting leftovers.
I looked online for shelves to buy but didn't find anything affordable and I didn't even think to ask my husband to build some because he already has a lot going on but when I mentioned I was just going to buy some cheap IKEA shelves, he told me he would build me some. We both searched online and then I saw West Elm post this photo on instagram...
I showed it to Omar and he told me he could build something like this for me so we drew a rough draft and measured our wall and compared it to west elm's version. We decided to make ours a bit taller and wider. Here are our original plans. I don't really have a full tutorial for you all but I'm gonna share as many details as possible in case you want to build these yourself. Here are our plans...
Our shelves ended up being 60in wide and 70in tall. Hope the picture explains itself, if not please leave me a comment or send me an e-mail. We used pine wood: 1x12 for the shelves and 1x3 for the ladder or the long ends in the the front and back. Mu husband cut the tops, bottoms and notches (which I will explain a little more below) to a 10 degree angle.
First he measured everything and cut our boards to the length we would need them. Instead of having ladder boards like west elm to hold every shelf my husband built little notches where the shelves could fit into. He used his miter saw and cut about 1/4in into the boards at the same 10 degree angle as the bottom and tops.
When we assembled them he used his wooden mallet to get them into place and then he nailed the whole thing down. Before assembly he sanded and stained all of the shelves with Minwax® Special Walnut 224 Stain and then I painted the ladder (front and back sections) parts BEHR Graphic Charcoal in a satin finish. Love our new shelves! They fit perfectly along the wall in our office nook.
I will be posting our master bedroom reveal next week! Let me know if you decide to try to build these yourself. They aren't too difficult to make.
