Make Your Own DVD Shelf

(and stick it to the man in the process!)

I went to Target and bought a DVD shelf. For $30 I though it was fine. Then my collection got bigger. And bigger. Now the shelf I had was too small, and you know what... I couldn't find another like it anywhere. To get a wider shelf would cost $90 at the time. So the shelf project would cost me $120 at my logic. Unacceptable to a tightwad like me.

I found a similar shelf, and it looked fine, but really looked akward next to the other shelf. So I dealt with it the best way I knew how, pointing out how awful it looked to anybody who would listen. At least it didn't cost me more than $25.

Would you believe it, my dvd acquistions grew, and now I was getting out of room again. If only the shelves were wider, a little taller, I would be much happier. They weren't. So on a search I went for the perfect shelf, and much to my dismay, I couldn't find a workable solution. Metal shelves looked ugly, wire shelves would drop the dvd's, a bookcase was too formidable next to the tv. I went to Ikea and found nothing to my liking.

So, I decided that I would build a dvd shelf myself. Know what? It wasn't too hard. I can't cut wood straight, I am terrible at these hands-on projects, but the design I came up with is simple enough that I wanted to share it.

All I did was find a plank of wood that would be deep enough to hold dvd's, measured the space, rounded out the number, and cut wood to make the shelves. If only I knew that the wood could have been cut at Home Depot for free, I wouldn't have borrowed a table saw, and made those awful cuts.

Now, a shelving unit is basically a box, so what I did was I measured how many shelves I wanted, how tall I wanted the unit, how tall each shelf, and rounded that to a number I could easily work with. Then, I got four smaller pieces of wood (like 2X4's, but not exactly) for the sides, and drilled the holes in the planks for the shelves. I drilled holes in the shelves on the side, and screwed the two together. That's a shelf. It isn't hard to do, and since there is no real weight on the shelf, you don't have to worry about bracing the sides or back to deal with weight distribution.

The project cost about $30 total, and I have a nice wooden shelf that looks good. After I built the shelf, would you believe it, I found plans over at the home theater forum that was even easier. Their idea is using threaded poles, and using a nut/washer combo making simple shelves. This is even easier and cheaper.... You can use premade shelves from Home Depot that cost $5 a shelf, and you won't even have to finish your unit!

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