Need Clever Book Shelving/Storage Ideas

Zeromus

My book (and comic) collection is starting to take over the apartment a wee bit, which has me (and the girlfriend) on edge. We'd like to have some shelving or storage units to put them in, but there's a twist: I'd like for the units to fit into our fairly sizable fake fireplace. Ideally, I'd also be able to have the books lined up and displayed rather than, say, put in a closed plastic container or box.

Anyone have any ideas?

Edit: Just to clarify, we have a pretty massive bookshelf that's completely filled already, otherwise I wouldn't be resorting to this space Also, it occurs to me that it wouldn't necessarily look terrible to pile the books in there (like so: http://www.recyclart.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/repurposed-fireplace-bookshelf-300x250.jpg) but I need to access and read these regularly so that's not an appealing option.

see317

You have any pictures of the fire place in question?
Also, are you looking to get shelves around the fire place, or actually just filling the fire place up with books?

Might be easiest to just hit IKEA or some place similar and see what they have in the way of small, free standing shelf units that would fit inside the fireplace. Personally, I'd be really hesitant to install anything more permanent just on the off chance that you damage the fireplace (I imagine they're pricey to repair).

Iruka

Assuming its a gas fireplace, make sure you disable the pilot and don't nick any gas lines if you do anything other than shove a lot of books in there. I've never owned a gas fireplace, so I don't know how easy or hard it would be to start a fire or gas leak when modifying its contents, but I would make sure that's not an issue.

Personally I would probably just find the best fit shelving unit I could and stuff it in there, but I don't know quite how "sizable" it is. do you want this to be like a handyman sort of diy project, or just the simplest solution?

Elin

Are the sides straight? Take the measurement of the width and get boards cut to size at home depot. Then build a board and cinder block/brick shelving unit in there.

http://www.ehow.com/how_4613899_bookshelf-out-cinder-blocks-boards.html

tynic

@see317 is right, you just need to measure the space you need and shop around at ikea, amazon, whatever, for a bookcase with those dimensions. You probably won't get it exact, but you should be able to get something pretty close.

If possible, I personally would go with the following just because it will look nicer, but it depends on a few things: If the fireplace is not functional and you own the apartment (or your landlord is cool with it), there's no reason you can't just put some bespoke shelving directly into the niche. You just need to have boards/shelves cut to the right size and choose some fairly heavy-duty shelf supports (since books can be quite a load). You will need to make sure the supports are well-anchored but I'd assume the fireplace is brick, which shouldn't be a problem. Basically, I would suggest you hit up a hardware store and talk to someone there about anything you're not sure of.

And yeah, a photo would help us assess how easy this will be.

Zeromus

I'll try to get a photo up shortly. The fireplace is seriously fake: No equipment or old parts or anything. Basically just a hole in some brick. I'm thinking I may try to track a few of these down: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30223589/

tynic

Yep, those are good and solid and look nice.

Jebus314

As an alternative to the fireplace I've always wanted to run a shelf around the room just below the ceiling. Since nothing is usually hanging up there it's a cool use of the empty space, and depending on how low your ceilings are, relatively easy to access.