Take, for instance, an old bureau belonging to a cottage set. The mirror, perhaps, is broken, or if it is not it can be used to better advantage elsewhere. Removing that, there is left merely a chest of drawers, which we will proceed to convert into a bookcase by the addition of shelves placed on top. If you have a brother who is handy with his tools the matter is simple enough; without him a carpenter may have to be employed to make the shelves, or, by taking the plan and measurements to a carpenter-shop the materials can be obtained ready for use, and all you will have to do will be to put them together. Although there is a saying that “a girl can never drive a nail straight,” we have reason to believe the contrary, and feel sure that a little practice will enable most girls to do many bits of light carpentry work as well as the boys. Three feet is the height of a bureau belonging to an ordinary set of cottage furniture, so we will take that as our standard for measurement, and make our shelves according to it.
Fig. 366 is the diagram for the frame of the shelves. The side pieces are made of boards three feet four inches long and nine inches wide; the top of each of these boards is sawed into a point as shown in diagram. Four cleats made of sticks eight inches long and one inch thick are nailed to the side of each board, the distance between being nine inches.
The frame at the back is composed of two boards five and one half feet long and seven inches wide, and two, three feet three inches long (the width of the bureau) and seven inches wide. One of these short boards is nailed across the top ends of the long boards, and the other twenty-four inches below. The side pieces are nailed to the back as shown in diagram, the nails being driven through the back board into the edge of the side piece.
When the frame is made it is placed on the bureau, the sides resting on the top and the long back boards reaching down behind where they are nailed or screwed to the bureau. The shelves are thirty-seven inches long and nine inches wide. They rest on the cleats and are not nailed to the frame.
Screws may in some places, answer better than nails.
When the shelves have been adjusted, the whole is painted a dark olive green.
If the knobs are removed from the drawers before the bureau is painted, and brass handles substituted afterward, it will add materially to its appearance.
The bookcase shown in our illustration is finished off with curtains, which hang by brass rings from a slender bamboo pole. The pole is slipped through brass hooks screwed into the side pieces near the top.
Curtains of canton-flannel, or any soft material, are suitable for this bookcase. The colors may be a combination of olive green with old blue, yellow, cherry, copper color, dark red, or light brown.