My Library Wall Specs

Our living room was one of the first rooms we renovated after our house flooded in 2021 during a thunderstorm. It is an extremely long and narrow room that was split in half by the doorway (and at one point a hideously ugly fireplace that was on top of carpet), and we had a really difficult time figuring out what to do with the half of it that was not housing the couch and TV. Last summer, I got a DM from a follower that said "You know what this room needs, is a library wall with a rolling library ladder." DONE!

It was the perfect idea, and we had the perfect space for it. The only major decision left to make was if we were going to do a window seat underneath the window or bookshelves. Because of the height of the window, we went with shelves underneath it.

I toyed with the idea of the Billy Bookcase hack, which I had seen several fellow DIYers use to great success, but I ultimately decided against that, which I explain here. The main reason for this was simply that the bookshelves were not the right size for the space, and I wanted the bookshelves to stretch from wall to wall. My dad joined me for this project and we had so much fun working together!

Bookshelf Specs

Our wall is just a hair wider than 12 ft and our ceilings are 92 in. Here is the exact breakdown of our shelves. Our baseboards are 10 inches tall to match the height of the basebaords in the rest of our downstairs. We used a 12 inch pine board which Kyle scribed to fit the slope of the floor.

Oddly enough, the space between the window and baseboard and the height of the window was the exact same: 36 inches. This meant I could either do 3 - 12 inch shelves, or 2 - 18 inch shelves. I have a lot of really tall books for my music studio, so I opted for the bottom two to be 18 inch shelves, which to be honest, is quite tall. The average shelf height is 8 - 12 inches, with your standard novel being 9 inches tall. The top shelf is only 10 inches, so it houses our shortest books! The shelves are all secured to studs in the wall

For the depth of the shelves, we chose 11.75 in and this is simply to get the maximum use out of our birch plywood, and accounting for the 1/8 inch you lose from the saw blade. A standard size sheet of plywood is 4x8 ft, so we were able to get 4 shelves out of each piece. All of the shelves are secured together with pocket holes using our kreg jig.

The length of each shelf was right around 3 ft. It is not recommended to do a shelf longer than that because it can start to droop in the middle from the weight of the books. To try and prevent that, we added a 1x2 board along the back of each shelf that was nailed into the studs as well as 1x2 trim along the front of the shelves.

For the backing, I used beadboard wallpaper and everything is painted in the color Spa Blue by Behr. Here are our ceiling tiles.

This is probably my favorite project I've ever done in this house and it has racked up over 20 million views online too, so I know you love it as well!

Library Wall Sources

Miter Saw	Wood Panel Paintable Prepasted Wallpaper	Paintable Beadboard Wallpaper White	Cordless Drill
Paint Roller Tray Kit	Brad Nailer	1 x 2 x 8 ft Board	Mold Killing Primer
Birch Sanded Plywood	Foam Ceiling Tiles	Circular Track Saw	Cordless Track Saw

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