I built a shelf

I have what I like to consider a mid-century modern/Danish modern living room design but what is really a bunch of cast-off '70s thrift-store furniture.  I am pretty much okay with that, since, in the '70s, even the remarkably ugly chairs seemed to have been both sturdy and very comfortable.  Also, because thrift-store-ugly MCM is way, way, way cheaper than the good stuff.

One thing that I was kind of coveting, however, was one of those fancy, sleek bookshelf modules for which MCM (DM especially) is so well-known.  There was no way I was paying for a real one, though, so I decided to build one.  I had a few things I had to work around.

--One wall of my living room has a baseboard water-radiator heater running the whole length of the wall.  When I moved in, this materially changed my plan for the room design.  It meant that I couldn't have a regular book case flush to the wall, which meant it needed to be short.

--Because of the radiator, I also knew that I wanted something without a backboard, to allow better heat circulation.  This meant that the shelf would be missing some of the support and stability you usually get from the backboard on free-standing shelves.  (It actually stays very, very warm in the apartment.  It is regularly around 80 degrees during the winter, even when I have all of the windows open.  It is very nice not having to pay for heating, but I would like to not pay for a little less.  In any case, I wouldn't have minded blocking some of the heat, but it seemed like a safety issue.)

--I wanted something long, to tie the room together a bit.  I didn't have a couch or loveseat in my apartment--just four super-comfortable but non-matching chairs.  Although I know this is an interior decorating faux pas, I have a tiny living room and couldn't find anything small enough and cute enough to fit into my apartment.  Also, I have to carry anything I buy up a flight of stairs and through three doorways by myself (besides trying to pack it into my tiny car to get it here) and anything bigger than an arm chair is just a bit daunting.

--I wanted something low for two reasons.  First, I wanted something that could serve as side tables for the two chairs on either side of the room.  Second, the facing side of the living room was already covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and I was afraid that anything tall would make the room seem claustrophobic.

--I wanted something very neutral and with clean lines, because I have a lot of patterns in the room, and a lot of color, and, of course, the books on the bookshelf across the room are sort of chaotic looking (they are arranged more or less chronological, according to topic, not by color and height).

These are the kinds of shelves that I was thinking about and really, really liked:

So, I thought about the problem for a while, drew up a few different plans, went to the store and bought a bunch of 12" wide fake pine MDF, sawed it into many pieces, laboriously, with a hand-saw, wished I had a table saw, and a bunch of clamps, and a workshop, tried to keep Riley from bouncing through the piles of sawdust, vacuumed up a LOT of sawdust, and eventually had a mostly stable shelf.  It has been over a year now and, despite repeatedly bumping it with the swively orange chair on the left, and despite Riley running into it periodically when she is chasing frisbees, it hasn't fallen over or gotten any more wobbly.

It is the perfect height for reading lamps and it neatly fits my "pretty" needlework books, so I can sit and browse through patterns.  It also made a great place to display some of my larger and more unwieldy super-'70s yellow and brown pfaltzgraff village dishes, which cleared out the kitchen cabinets a bit, as well.