I know this has nothing to do with Laundromats but it was a fun project for my daughter’s room.
A few years ago we saw something similar in a store and she loved it and wanted one in her room. Sure, a simple task.
Well, it took me a couple of years for a few reasons.
1- How to make it stable without damaging the books
2- As a book lover, I prefer to hold and read a book over an electronic book any day. I have read hundreds of books in my life, so far, and I don’t plan on stopping, I had to get past the idea that I would destroy the book in the process.
3- How to make it work and be stable.
These are all things a teenager never thinks about but I did lay awake at night thinking about it.
Finally, I came across a store that was literally giving the books away as they were closing down. So I loaded the car and took them home. This pile was actually stored under her bed for a while and was really bugging her. I added more books that were left in a rental house and finally made the move.
The first step was to find a base that would work. I ended up cutting some pieces from an old TV mount.
Next, I drilled a couple of holes to connect the metal conduit through.
The top arch was just a 4′ piece for conduit that I used a bender in the store to round the ends.
For support, I connected the upright pieces to the wall with some threaded rod and some heavyweight wall anchors. I just used the threaded part of the wall anchors and used 3″ screws into the wall studs.
One of the hardest parts was lifting the loaded arch on to the uprights and sitting it in place. The holes in the books on this section were drilled closer to the edges so they would hang down and not hit the roof.
The holes were drilled using a 1″ wood bit. The paperbacks were hard as they fluffed up a lot. I found by clamping the books together, drilling a few pages at a time and cleaning the bit a lot it worked OK. I did drill a small pilot hole through first so I could drill from both sides.
Another challenge was how to cover the connections. The uprights were filled up to the wall support and then the top arch was filled on the floor and lifted into place.
What I ended up doing was to cut some slots into some large, hardcover books and just slide them into place after everything was tight.
First I drilled the holes like normal and then used a reciprocation saw to do most of the cutting.
An oscillating saw helped finish up the corners.
And there it is. It was actually in another room for a couple of months before we switched rooms. I did find that the books “settled” after a while as the fluffed up pages were compressed by the weight.
Not your normal project but t turned out great.
Ken
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