Custom Vinyl Record Shelves

Sometime around the middle of last year my record collection got to the point where It just would not fit in the IKEA shelves I was using to store it any more. I thought about things for a while.  At one point I considered rearranging the office where I store my media and moving the records to another wall where I would have more room for more shelving.

That would have worked but it also would have been a compromise in other ways, like my desk protruding out into the middle of the room more making the space feel smaller.  I knew there had to be a better way.  That got me thinking about building custom shelves that made better use of the space the collection was already occupying.

Record Shelves

I am not new to building furniture, in the past I have built a bed frame, the aforementioned desk, CD/DVD racks, a stereo rack, a TV Stand, a coffee table and a few other projects here and there.  I am far from a pro but I can do some pretty nice work.

I designed a shelf that fit the space I had perfectly, would be strong enough to hold lots of records and would be relatively easy to cut and assemble.  I decided to construct it from oak veneered plywood.  I used this same material for constructing my desk, I found it to be easy to work with, strong and not outrageously expensive.

With my dads help I took a trip to home depot and purchased 3 4×8 sheets of 3/4″ thick oak veneer plywood at $45 each. Also 2 sheets of some sort of thin wood veneer cabinet lining, it had a nice grain that would work well with oak and it was only $10 a sheet.

I had already taken the time last year when I had the idea to draw out a diagram of which parts would be cut from each piece of plywood.  Minimizing waste and giving me a sure plan to follow so I would end up with all the parts I needed.  I spent several days marking and cutting each piece.  I also purchased a piece of manufactured trim board to use as a fence for my circular saw. Since I do not own a table saw I would have to cut things by hand.

Cut shelves and dividers ready to assemble!

The cutting went well, I didn’t have any mistakes and my lines were nice and sharp, things were going well!  The above picture shows all of the cut pieces minus one of the side boards that I had brought into the office to make sure it would fit and would be able to be stood up since the shelf will only fit under doorways on its side.  It’s always good to be sure of these things while you still have the ability to make changes to the design.

The next step was to begin sanding the boards and applying oak veneer banding to the exposed edges.  The edging has a glue that melts when heated and is simply applied with a standard clothing iron on the cotton setting. Lots of sanding and ironing on edging.  I used almost 3 full 25′ rolls of iron on oak edging on this project.

Once I had enough boards sanded and edged I began assembly starting at the top and working my way down. Below is a photo of the initial stages with the top and sides attached and the first divider about to go on.  All of the screws were countersunk with a neat tool i have that drills a pilot hole and a countersink hole at the same time. After that it flips over and has a screwdriver on the other end so you can drive the screws in immediately after drilling the holes.

First pieces going together!

Moving on a bit further we come to a problem.  After the first shelf you get to a point where you can not just screw the dividers to the shelves from both directions.

I had to use dowels at the top end of each divider, the bottom end would be screwed to the shelf below it.  I made a doweling jig from a piece of scrap wood so that I could drill holes in both the shelf and the dividers at exactly the same spot every time.  It worked perfectly and I used 3/8″ oak dowels at the top of each divider.  Below is a picture with the second shelf installed, it was the first one I had to use the dowels on.  All the remaining shelves have dowels at the tops of the dividers.

2nd shelf installed, the dowels work!

Further construction was just repeating what I had already done before. Iron on edging, sanding, drilling dowels, screwing things together.

A few more shelves done, cooking now!

Here’s a shot of me putting in the last few screws in what is actually the bottom but I had to get on a ladder to install them since I built upside down.

The last few screws.

Here is the finished assembly. I have already flipped the shelves over to their upright state and filled in all of the screw holes with wood filler and done a final sanding.  I placed some cardboard and a scrap piece of wood underneath so it would be ready for finishing.  I am finishing the piece with clear gloss polyurethane.

Finished Assembly stage!

Here it is after the first coat of polyurethane, it took an entire quart to do one coat!  You can see that it is darkened up a bit and the grain is much more prominent.

First coat of polyurethane!

Here is the finished product drying after 3 coats of polyurethane I had a finish I was happy with,  looking back I guess I should have just bought a gallon of polyurethane rather than by the quart.  I didn’t realize it was going to take so much!  I cut and sanded the backing and applied some polyurethane to it as well before nailing it on the back of the shelves with 1 penny nails. Ignore the light at the bottom, I wasn’t done nailing when the picture was taken.

Finished and drying!

Finally I unloaded my old shelves and moved all of my records out of the office so I could get the new shelf in there. I somehow managed to drag the thing from the garage to the office by myself and get it stood up and where it needed to be.  Then it was just the seemingly endless shuffle of re-shelving all of the records a handful at a time.  In the end everything fit perfectly, the shelves fit the space exactly as I envisioned it and the shelf will hold about 1700 or 1800 records at full capacity.

Finished and proud of it!