The Lady Protests: Book Shelves

If you're half as bookish and geeky as me, there's a high chance you may be drawn by this floating book shelf project as I was, like a nerd to a flame. Despite having to wield an electric drill, much to Red's dismay and my excitement, this project was actually surprisingly easy and even though completed a fortnight ago, they're still standing to this day, a triumph!

Here are your ingredients;

So there's a few old books obtained from Oxfam , a roll of masking tape, a pencil, L -brackets, screws, a tape measure (yes, I did steal a bunch of Ikea's paper ones...they have so many!), and a big, bad drill.

Begin by measuring up your wall, thinking where you'd like your shelves to be/how far apart etc. Take into consideration the dimensions of the space you're working with and go from there. My wall is on a diagonal, so I thought this composition worked best;

After ensuring the brackets were equidistant, I secured them to the wall with masking tape, before drilling holes.

This was the hardest part of the project for me and forgot Red's words of wisdom, (righty tighty, lefty loosey) which is more applicable with a standard screwdriver than an electric drill, but I still managed to get confused.

Once all screws are in place and brackets are sturdy, you're good to go and can begin balancing your chosen books over the brackets. You could drill holes into the book's cover, through the horizontal bracket to ensure the shelves are more secure, but that felt too much like sacrilege to me, so I simply slotted the horizontal bracket into the back cover of the book, like this;

And left the hard cover to balance on the screw below from the vertical bracket, to stop the cover from flapping about. You can PVA the inside of the cover to the bracket, so you don't damage the book too much, which looks a lot neater and is just as effective. As these shelves are more decorative than designed to sustain great weights, be careful what you place on them. I Put A Bird On It ,

Then a sunflower,