How to Set Up a Home Library - Part 1

Photo by Emil Widlund on Unsplash.com

I’m going to look like a complete hypocrite, but I bought four large bookshelves.  Yes, I realize what my headline says at the top of my blog but something had to be done.  

We love books in this family and I realized we had them in nearly every room of the house.  There was a bookshelf in the office, another in the basement, and shelves in each kid’s bedrooms.  My daughter also has those cool floating shelves I wrote about last year.   

For books, we have everything from board books to graduate level math and engineering textbooks.  Then of course, there are the antique books I rescued from my grandparent’s farm.  I wanted them all in one place.  I wanted a library.  

Since I’m an engineer, I used the same tactic in bookshelf shopping that I used to reduce the amount of coffee I drink.  In other words, I made a spreadsheet.

How does a spreadsheet help you shop for bookshelves?  If you’ve shopped online for bookshelves lately, you will find the choices are overwhelming.  I had to narrow it down somehow based on my space and budget.  I didn’t want to start putting books on my shelves only to find out I didn’t have room for all of them.  

I grabbed my tape measure and went all over the house measuring the shelves we have and tracking it all in a spreadsheet.  I even measured the stacks of books in my daughter’s room.  Then I added it all up to find that I needed about 650 inches or 54 feet of shelf space.  I assumed that the kids would keep some books in their rooms and that I would also donate at least some books in the process so I could go with a little less if needed.  Below is the table I used to estimate how much shelf space I needed.

The location I chose gave me a wall ten feet wide with a ceiling height of about 8 ft.  Looking at my spreadsheet, I knew that if I had just six shelves that were nine feet across, I should have enough space.  This helped me narrow down the search.

I looked at several bookshelves that could meet my needs but I needed a good way to compare them.  I used my spreadsheet to calculate the number of inches of shelf space and divided that by the total cost.  This gave me a $/inch value to compare each with.  When I found the right combination of width and number of shelves to get close to my 650 inches of shelf space, and found the right price I had a winner.  

Here is my table sorted by $/inch.  If you’re curious, I settled on the Hemnes from IKEA.  This is actually four bookshelves, two are 33 ½” and two are about 17” wide.  Each has six shelves.  I decided it gave me the closest to my 650 inches and still kept the cost reasonable.  

Granted, a simple cost comparison doesn’t take into account the quality difference between these.  I tried to find ones that were fairly comparable.  If your budget allows you to get custom shelves made or you have the time and skill to build them yourself then more power to you.  

Actually getting the shelves from IKEA in the middle of a pandemic proved much more difficult than expected but ultimately we got them and I’m happy..  My oldest son did a good job putting the shelves together.  To keep them from falling on anyone, we attached them to the wall with safety straps screwed into the studs.  These also helped line all four shelves up so that it looks like one large bookcase.  

Before I filled the shelves up though, I wanted a way to help organize the books.  Come back to read part 2 for my review of library apps to organize your book collection.