These shelves were designed and made for my friend and teacher Angeliki Kokkini who introduced me to the second level of Reiki. It was a present in return.

Angeliki and her husband live in a small house and together, they own many books. They needed to save space inside their apartment and asked me if I would be willing to make some shelves for them or a bookcase.

Of course I said yes!

Being a small apartment it would not be very helpful if a bookcase took up some of their floor space. Therefore what I wanted was to build shelves that would be mounted on the wall. They agreed with this recommendation and proposed 2 locations inside their house for 2 sets of shelves.

Being middle aged, and physically not too flexible, the decision was made to design and make shelves that would be easy to adjust according to their particular needs. Not being too keen in using tools, the adjustment would have to be simple and intuitive, obviously without the use of tools. The slot system would serve this purpose. In addition, the apartment they live in is rented, therefore it would have to be easy to uninstall the shelves and easily move them to another location. This led to the decision to design a system that would be comprised of smaller components.

The material chosen was birch plywood since it would be durable enough for the purpose and lets not kid ourselves, It is so easy to process and finish in relation to solid wood… and mechanically so much durable for the particular stresses the shelves would go through.

The most difficult to make were the slots. They needed to be tight enough for the shelves to keep their angle while spacious enough for my friend to adjust the shelves easily. They were made using a router. Because our router is neither powerful enough nor deep enough, the slots were cut on both sides one by one. It was not worth making a guide to router off material in one go.

Screws with counter holes were drilled into the vertical supports in such a way that they would be hidden for aesthetic purposes and the fact that the wall was straight and level was very lucky!