While this quirky bookshelf may not hold a whole library, it will certainly make a talking point for your guests!
Many will find this gravity defying bookshelf very different. Although it looks like it shouldn’t be able to hold any books as it’s upside down, it’s a very effective way of storing books. Not to mention that it also makes a unique feature.
The materials needed to build this unique bookshelf are easy to find and doesn’t cost much. Building one should only take a couple of hours, and would require basic tools.
Materials:
- Shelf
- 2 Metal Shelf Brackets
- Long Elastic/Garter
- Screws
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Tools:
- Staple Gun
- Tape Measure
- Drill
Steps:
The key things you need to figure out are how wide your books are and what length of elastic is good enough to support all of the books against the board without crushing them against it.
Measuring out my books, the average width was one inch and the ideal length of elastic turned out to be 14 inches.
Now that you have a length and a width, the next step is to staple gun two pieces of elastic down the middle of the board. I’m going to be suspending 12 books here, so I used just over 14 feet of material for each side.
Start each piece of elastic with the excess facing in. Staple this in place and fold the elastic back over to start running it down the board. Measure out 14 inches, staple it one inch farther and repeat until you get to the other end and fold the excess back inside again before stapling it.
I slid the books in and even the heaviest book was perfectly snug. It turned out that two straps was too much for the smaller books and started to compress them, so I only used the front strap and squished the other strap behind it.
Now that you know that the shelf itself is stable, add a couple of brackets to the other side of the board. Then simply screw it into the wall.
Note: This was intended for a short term installation. To make it more permanent, I’d recommend hiding a couple L brackets on the underside.
You can leave it as is or go for some more realism by gluing some toys, bookends, or even a fake drink to the bottom of the board to complete the look!
You can take this project to the next level by building a full size bookshelf that will hold more books. That will give you more book storage, and a unique feature that’s hard to ignore, and will certainly make a talking point for your guests.
Thanks to fungus amungus for this great project.
