DIY | Floating Books Shelves

After reading about some floating book shelves over at www.skyejethani.com I decided on a little DIY.  After visiting eHow.com and nicking their instructions I took a little trip to the hardware store with a gift card I had from Christmas.  

The only supplies I needed to purchase were the L brackets, drywall mounts & some fender washers.  The brackets were under $4 a piece & the other stuff less than that.  Other supplies that I had on hand were 2 good sized (9" +) books I didn't intend to read/use anymore (yes, one of them is the DaVinci Code; it was worthy of being torn up & not read again...probably shouldn't have read it the first time), some Gorilla Glue & wood screws.

I drew a line in the middle of the book where the bracket would go, used the bracket to mark the holes where I would put the screws and then did the same thing on the inside of the book where the back pages began.  I didn't really get how eHow was suggesting it be done so I made it up.  I took my utility knife and notched out the pages until the bracket was flush with the back cover and fit well in the slices I had notched out.  

I glued the pages together that I had scored for the bracket to fit in, then I put in the screws through the back cover on the marks (it worked so I must have measured correctly or gotten lucky).  I had to put quite a bit of pressure on the book so the pages didn't wrinkle from the screws.  I also put a bunch of Gorilla glue on the bracket and back cover.  

I put the drywall mounts in the wall so that the book would be 44" off the ground, 7" to either side of the bed and then screwed the bracket into the drywall mounts using the fender washers since the screw head was too small for the bracket.  That's funny...screw head.  Too small.

Anyway...add a few books and voila...there's a stack of books magically floating on our wall.  

I'm somewhat pleased with the result.  They actually look much smaller than I envisioned but I really couldn't have gone bigger without larger brackets and significantly larger books.  Maybe on the next try.  Fun little project!