Our new apartment, unlike our old, doesn’t have built-in bookcases. We were trying to decide between making or buying a bunch of plain vanilla wooden bookcases when kad had a stroke of genius: library carts, aka book trucks. Librarians use them to reshelve books, but no reason they can’t be the shelves.
We ordered a few standard-issue flat shelf carts from Vernon Library Supplies, though they’re also available with slanted shelves and in various other configurations. In addition to Vernon, School Outfitters and Brodart also have a bunch of different models.
Brilliant! Sounds way better than my Ikea bookshelves. The only problem is that they aren’t very tall, so you don’t get an efficient utilization of the space. Still, you can do things like hang lots of pictures on the walls with the carts beneath, or wheel them into the closet or under a table if you need space. I may have to consider one or two of these, since my current bookshelves have run out of ledge space to store excess books, and my bedroom is threatening to become a bookroom, relegating me to sleeping on the couch.
Genius! I’ve got the same worry about seanahan re: space, though — maybe you’ve moved to a place with very low ceilings but lots of square feet?
Bravo! My library has officially outgrown the one bedroom that was dedicated to it and taken over my wife’s sewing room which has been renamed the annex. We got some nice tall shelves at a local furniture store. I even got some cool old-fashioned, industrial strength bookends to place on the very top shelf for the overstock.