By Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker – March 22, 2010 at 03:00PM
If you’d like a lot of shelf space for less money than you’d spend on traditional bookcases and without all the damage to the wall that comes with wall-mounted shelving, these DIY compression shelves are a great alternative.
Instructables user Tiffehr was inspired by the free-standing shelves designed by Julie Scheu. Since they were a custom build and it would be outrageous to commission another custom build, the only solution was to DIY.
Using parts from IKEA as well as shelving from the local hardware, they were able to construct a sturdy and reasonable replica of the inspiration piece. The total cost came to $550—a cost which could be substantially reduced by using less expensive wood for the shelves—for two of the shelves seen in the photo here. Half a grand isn’t chump change by anyone’s measure but for a quality bookcase that isn’t a particle-board piece of crap, $550 for two attractive and sturdy shelves isn’t outrageous at all.
Check out the full Instructable at the link below or sound off in the comments with you own creative DIY projects.