Bookcase Wall

Moore Family
of Arizona

Bookcase Wall - Plan & Construction

When we first moved into our house we were impressed with the amount of space in the central entry Formal room:: about 40' x 25' plus a large entry vestibule and soaring 18' vaulted ceilings.

We still like this room but its also a huge space to define and to light effectively - the lighting we tried all looked flat in such a big space and the area looked too empty. the Front and rear wall are interesting with a bank of windows/doors and transoms above on the back and an entry vestibule with illuminated side alcoves at the front.

One end wall has interesting architectural features - illuminated upper arches into the kitchen area and flanking open entries - while the other end was very plain - and very wide & tall too.

After trying various decorating ideas to address this we concluded the only way to really define the space better (and avoid the blank wall being so visually dominant) was to build a similarly interesting architectural feature for that end wall on a more normal "room scale"

The other conclusions we drew after living in the house for several months was that although we had a huge amount of storage in the kitchen - other storage and display locations were rather limited.

This combined with a huge book and magazine collection spurred the development of a plan for ookcase/display feature across that whole wall - incorporating accent and room lighting.

Architecturally the house has a partially realized theme of a sort of floating architrave beam at a low ceiling height - you can see this in the Kitchen Construction details quite clearly... It is echoed in several places but is not as consistently applied as it could be... So I decided to replicate this idea by building out a support column and a consistently sized architrave/ pot shelf enclosing an area combining a wall of bookcases/display shelves above a bank of storage cupboards. There are 6 bookcases with a single giant face frame mounted above 6 cabinets - with the cabinets comprising 2 x 3-drawer units, and 4 x dual-door cupboards. The cupboards are deeper than the bookcases so there is a low shallow countertop above them.

Somewhat in keeping with the Kitchen implementation I added flush mounted can down-lighters also accenting the bookcase. I also added up-lighters in cans in the top of the architrave beam to address the room lighting and rope lighting through all the top shelves of the bookcases for a display shelf area.

The wall construction was with 2"x 4" framing throughout securely mounted to the existing walls, the upper surface is plywood for strength and the whole wall area enclosure is drywall professionally finished to match the house.

The bookcase & cupboards were sourced from IKEA as flat pack furniture, including face frame materials and countertops (shelves in fact). I was able to match together slightly different width bookcases & cabinets via the careful mounting of the face frames.

I did need to adapt the bookcases - cutting them down in height, relocating some shelves and reinforcing their backs, I also needed to trim the cabinet tops/bottoms so they would but tightly together side by side and add a toe kick area to receive baseboiards.

As part of this constructions I added dimmers and scene lighting control for the whole room as well as a cupboard configured for audio/video equipment for both this room and the adjacent master bedroom. Both rooms have in wall mounted speakers and IR receivers merged in a dual repeater module feeding IR emmiters inside the AV cupboard.

I also wired through the loft area an IR control line, Audio/Video feeder and separate Audio only feed to/from the Family room AV system so I can have whole house music and so I can also remotely control my HD TiVO while feeding its signal to my bedroom wall mount TV.

Overall we are all very happy with this set-up - the bookcases are full, the cupboards are full and the audio system & whole house music is used regularly. Meanwhile the room lighting is now very pleasant and can be reconfigured at will via the scene lighting controls (and some extra lighting project options).