Yesterday I cleaned and organized my apartment. Now that the semester’s over I realized I didn’t really need my books lying out anymore so I went to put them away. Not having enough bookspace on my shelves, I went out in search of some do it yourself job at Target or wherever. They cost around $30 for the absolute cheapest and go up in price from there.
So I decided to build one myself.
Three problems:
I have no tools
I have no materials
I’ve never actually, you know, built things before.
But I go to the hardware store and pick up the materials I need. After wandering around the entire store for close to 45 minutes, I finally collect everything I figure to need.
This includes:
2 pieces of 8’ oak board, one cut into 2-4’ pieces and one cut into 4-2’ pieces. (At $1 per cut at the store, which is ok seeing as I have no saw)
A goodly chunk of nails
A hammer
2 pieces of sandpaper
Total cost: $32. This is already more expensive than the do-it-yourself set I could have purchased yesterday. But now we factor in time in building it and that comes out to more too. Not to mention the fact that nails don’t seem to be working which means I’m going to have to borrow or buy an electric drill and try my luck at setting it all up.
Now, granted, things like hammers and drills and other tools are one time purchases where the cost can be spread out amongst many projects, but wood is REALLY expensive.
So the end result is that I haven’t saved any money, I haven’t saved any time, and I still don’t have a bookshelf.
It’s known as economies of scale. A manufacturer can set up production and produce a gazillion bookshelves in a day. They’ve got saws and jigs and sanders and sprayers for finishes and they’ve bought all the materials in bulk.
Meanwhile, if you build the bookshelf yourself, every step of the building process is a one-off. So you can’t compete in terms of cost of construction, cost of materials, and unless you’re pretty good, you can’t compete in the quality of the final finish (unless you have professional finishing equipment or lots of time).
However, what you can compete in is designing the bookshelf for your particular application; you can buy better materials than you'll find in the standard cheap bookshelf, and, if you spend the time and have the know-how, the construction will be as good or better.
It is true that your standard home center is not a great place to buy wood. If you go to a mill or lumber yard, you can get the wood at a cheaper price. How cheap depends on whether you want to buy the wood rough and mill it yourself. (Wood is cut to rough widths in the sawmill and then planed to the final width and jointed so that all sides are parallel. The final machining takes time, so it adds maybe 10 cents/board foot.)
As for the hammer and nails -- it's pretty safe to say that no decent piece of furniture is assembled with nails. For a bookshelf, it is stronger and looks nicer to rout dadoes (grooves) in the sides of the bookshelf and glue the shelfs into place. For extra strength you can screw the shelves into place from the outside and then fill the screw holes with wood plugs. In many cases you'll also shape the edges of the boards with a router to soften or decorate the corners
To summarize – there’s almost nothing you can build cheaper than buying it. You can build it nicer or with nicer materials.
Well, the first thing I see is that you will have an oak bookshelf instead of one made out of MDF (particle board) with a contact paper covering. The wood itself will be stronger and it should look better.
Our lumberyard, Pay-Less, went out of business sometime last year. Getting it cheaper than at a hardware store probably isn’t an option.
It’s true that doing it yourself allows you to personalize the project, but this thing isn’t going to be in the least bit fancy. It’s 4’x2’ with three shelves and a top. I’m not looking to recreate a Seymour and Son piece here, I just wanted a bookshelf. I can’t believe I’ve already spent $32 on the most basic of projects, with more to come in the future.
If there’s nothing I can build that’s cheaper than buying it completed, what are hardware stores good for? Giving you the chance to pat yourself on the back for a job well done?
I think you’re completely overlooking the significance of a point you’ve already made. Tools are one-time expenditures. Seven or so years ago I bought my first drill. That first project cost a bundle (I think I was hanging mini-blinds). Since then … not so much. Five or so years ago, I bought a circular saw. A couple of months ago, I built some shelves into a closet. Four shelves about two feet wide by a foot deep. Cost? About twelve bucks, because all I had to buy was lumber and some screws.
I honestly believe also that if you examine your purchase, you will find that most of the money you spent went toward that oak. Oak is outrageously expensive wood for simple projects and is a bitch to drive a nail through.
*Total cost: $32. This is already more expensive than the do-it-yourself set I could have purchased yesterday.
So the end result is that I haven’t saved any money, I haven’t saved any time, and I still don’t have a bookshelf.
What good is a hardware store?*
Perhaps the more pertinent question, with all due respect, is what good is your thinking process? Surely you knew before you handed over your money that your project would cost more than the ready-made bookshelf. It sounds like you’re trying to blame the hardware store for a decision you made.
If your goal is to make a bookshelf, you’re partway there, and you’re learning by experience.
If your goal is to have a bookshelf, you made a wrong turn earlier.
It’s also worth noting that those cheap bookshelves available at places like Wal-Mart really suck. I bought one for $20 or $30 a while back. It was made of particle board with wood-grain-colored stickers plastered onto it. The back was just a piece of thick material that wasn’t much stronger than cardboard. It came with nails to tack the cardboard on. That was the extent of the bookshelf’s support.
Naturally, as soon as I loaded it up with textbooks, the cardboard got torn off the nails and the bookshelf collapsed. I disassembled it and threw it in the trash. I guess you get what you pay for.
Oh yeah, I did the math. I knew before I got to the checkout that it would cost more than I could buy it whole. At that point, I figured “what the hell” and bought it all anyway. Who knows what mischief I could get into with a hammer?
I wish I had known that particle board was better. They steered me away from it, even though it was cheaper, because they said there’d be no way I’d get a nail through it. They recommended pine, but I didn’t like how it looked. All knotty and I’d have to varnish it which would be $5 extra in materials.
The real problem is that you didn’t call Mr. Cranky up to get him to make you one. He could’ve designed you a gorgeous artistic original piece and built it out of bird’s-eye maple with rosewood and wenge accents for a mere $1000. Plus about $300 to crate and ship it to Kansas.
But to answer your question seriously, a hardware store can save you money if it allows you to complete projects you’d have to otherwise pay an expert to do–like fix a toilet or install a garage door. But if you’re making a birdhouse or simple shelves or that sort of thing, then it doesn’t save you money over ourchasing the equivalent mass-produced retail item. It does, however, allow you get the satisfaction of doing it yourself (assuming that matters).
Not all pine/fir is ‘knotty’ - find ‘clear’ lumber… And driving a nail through oak is no easier than driving one through MDP.
I used HDP for closet shelves, and oak for counter trim - know what materials to use where.
If you assemble the oak properly, you will have shelves that will last a lifetime - if you buy the el-cheapo stuff from the local warehouse, expect to throw it out in a couple of years.
Cranky, if I had $1300 to spend on bookshelves, I’d probably blow it on strippers. But if I had $2600, I’d definitely keep half that for your husband’s work. I’ve seen the pictures, he’s made some really great stuff.
We shall see how well oak holds up. I found out my parents have an electric drill so I’ll be borrowing that tomorrow.
A drill is a step above a hammer for assembling hardwood shelves, but not quite where you need to be - watch Norm Abrams (and his $200,000 shop) assemble furniture - you would need dado blades on a table saw, joiner, glue, and clamps to do it right - treat this as a learning experience - you have already learned more about furniture than you would have assembling the $30 fake stuff.
Where did you get that idea? A couple people have already pointed out that buying oak is a big advantage over the prefab particle board, and I agree.
If you haven’t built those shelves yet, let me add a couple suggestions, though:
Don’t use nails, use screws (looks like you already found that out, though). Screws won’t back out and have less of a chance of splitting the wood.
Don’t screw (or nail) into the end grain of the shelf. Rather, screw a little “ledge” onto the side and set the shelf atop that.
Don’t forget to cross-brace the back.
Anyway, to answer your question: it’s not really fair to compare the shelves you make out of oak with the $30 Target shelves. If you want a piece of shit that will fall apart in a couple years or less, just spend the $30 and get the Target shelves. If you want a nice piece of furniture that will last forever, buy the $200 shelves… or spend $32 and make them yourself.
Only if you value your time as nothing. However if you want to quibble, there’s almost nothing * mass produced * that you can build cheaper than buying. For an example, this past week I found some bookshelves at Staples. Simple contemporary design, built out of some miscellaneous hardwood (maybe beech) glued up from short pieces. Cost $39.00. I’ll probably copy the design for some oak bookcases, but I won’t fool myself into thinking that I’m going to save any money – aside from the fairly simple machining, it’s going to take me hours to sand everything smooth and finish the wood.
Though it is possible to do kitchen remodeling, build an airplane, or do your own car repairs, a pro will do it several times faster – they will have the right tools, the right suppliers, and they’ll have encountered all the difficult problems before so they won’t spend hours figuring out how to frame a soffit or tile a counter.
** Ender ** – particle board won’t hold screws worth a damn and can’t support much weight.
Having built only a few little projects (with tons more on the drawing board) I definitely recommend the do-it-yourself approach. It will be more expensive as you are building up your tool repository, but in the end, with hard work and practice, you will be able to build beautiful furniture at a fraction of the cost of purchasing it from a store. (Sure the fraction may be 2/3, or 3/4 but so what, you got bragging rights)
One project was a TV stand that was built for the mini-stereo, game-console, and satellite receiver that I had, out of solid pine. Nothing fancy, but it was exactly what I needed, and ignoring the tools I bought (I always consider tools a capital expenditure ) I spent 30 - 50 bucks more than a particle board TV stand would have cost, and half the price of a commercially made, solid-pine stand.
The biggest point to remember is that you are building it out of solid oak for not too much more than cheap-ass particle board, be happy you didn’t choose cherry wood.
I misinterpreted what cornflakes said. After going back and rereading it, I found out my mistake.
So what you’re telling me is, don’t screw wood onto wood. Will that split the piece like nails will? But are you telling me to just rest the 2’ piece on top of screws, or to just drill the holes and try to find ledges that can fit into them?
For a proper comparision, you’d have to compare the bookcase you’re building to either a kit or a prebuilt bookshelf made of oak, not the cheapest one they had at Target. In those comparisons, I bet that the one you build costs less cash.
Hardware stores are good for a lot of reasons. Neither my husband or I would go to a hardware store or lumberyard to buy materials to build a regular bookcase. It’s just not worth it in terms of the time it would take to decide how exactly we want it to look and to plan it, etc. Way easier to go to Ikea and pick one we like (which will cost more than $30 and won’t be solid oak). We do, however go to hardware stores to buy materials to replace faucets, light switches, divide one huge bedroom into two, replace a kitchen floor,fix the plumbing etc, which cost less to do it yourself than to hire someone. (I have factored in our time. I have also factored in the fact that the time would otherwise be spent watching TV, and that if we hired someone, one of us would have to take off from work to be there while the work was being done. And the fact that the previous owners never did anything right, so that replacing the kitchen floor means taking up six layers of old flooring, and the roofer we hired was way off on his estimate, because he didn’t know he would have to tear off three old roofs and replace all of the plywood)
No no. Screwing wood to wood is perfectly OK. Just remember to drill pilot holes. What you want to avoid (and what a lot of cheapy prefab shelving units do is screwing directly into the end of your board (i.e., the screw itself is parallel to the long dimension of the board).
Hmm. Unfortunately, I’ll have to resort to ASCII art here. Forgive me. Anyway, interpret the following as a 2D front view of your shelf:
ssssssssssssssssssssss
ssssssssssssssssssssss
XXBB BBXX
XXBB BBXX
XX XX
XX XX
XXssssssssssssssssssXX
XXssssssssssssssssssXX
XXBB BBXX
XXBB BBXX
XX XX
XX XX
XX XX
where “s” is the horizontal shelf, “X” is the vertical side of the shelf, and “B” is the “ledge” shelf support. If you didn’t have the supports (“B”), then you’d probably attach the shelves to the sides by screwing through the sides into the end of the shelf. Supporting the shelf this way is bad because the end grain of the shelf will tend to split.
Instead, one easy alternative is to add in the ledge shelf supports (which are simply a stick of wood oriented so that the grain runs perpendicular to that of the shelf; i.e., you’re looking at the end of the support in my ASCII art above). Screw the supports to the sides, and they lay the shelf on the supports. You can screw the shelves to the supports, too, but remember to make the supports large enough, so that the screw is far enough away from the side, that you can fit a screwdriver into the space. Aesthetically, the length of the support can be somewhat shorter than the shelf is deep, so that the shelf overhangs the support and hides it from view.
) I spent 30 - 50 bucks more than a particle board TV stand would have cost, and half the price of a commercially made, solid-pine stand.