A month or so after moving into a new home, my wife and I knew we wanted to build a large floor to ceiling bookshelf with one of those sliding ladders. (I mean seriously, who doesn’t want one of those?) The space we had in mind was in our living room. There was a wall that was 10 feet wide and 11 feet 6 inches tall. After looking at other large bookshelves, we quickly sketched out a plan and went to Lowes to get the materials needed. Alright, let’s get started!


We decided to put cabinets as a base, because we wanted to have a lot of storage for seasonal things that might go on the shelves around Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Easter. So we bought some cabinets, that would be our base. The first thing we built was a 2 x 4 base for the cabinets to sit on.

The next thing we did was cut all the pieces out. Because of how many pieces this shelf would have, we thought it would be easier in the long run, to set up a make-shift spray booth in our garage using plastic sheets. So we took all 42 pieces of the shelf and painted them.


(Yes those are my painter’s flip flops. Don’t judge.)


While all the pieces were drying, we took the top to the cabinet outside so we could stain it.

Now that all the pieces are cut, painted and stained, let’s put this thing together.







The only thing left to do was to load the shelves up. Luckily we did make it so every shelf was adjustable. Which came in super handy since a lot of the pieces we were putting in the shelves were all different shapes and sizes.


To be honest, the best part about having a sliding ladder for this shelf (besides the fact it looks amazing) is that if you look at the last photo you can see a fire alarm on the ceiling on the right hand side of the shelf. And recently the battery was going dead in it, and it was incredibly handy in swapping it out.  If anyone is wanting to build their own large book shelf, but aren’t sure where to buy a sliding ladder, I’ll leave a link below.
Rolling Ladder Kit