Curved Shelving for an Oast House Roundel

These curved shelves were for the same client I made the Roundel Bedhead for. The reason the shelves are curved is becouse they are following the curved wall of the roundel where it joins onto the rest of the house.

The brief was to create shelving in the old doorway leading into the lounge from the roundel as the doorway wasn’t necessary any more as they had another entrance into the roundel from the kitchen.

I recommended creating a narrow curved stud wall to block the opening, then creating curved shelves to follow the outside line of the wall. They loved this idea.

Executing this was a little tricky but I love a challenge that looks simple but isn’t.

For the stud wall I made a curved head and base plate out of plywood and then fitted inch by inch uprights creating a frame (that resembled the hull of a boat more than a wall). Once this frame was fitted I bent and screwed plasterboard to the stud work (it took a lot of screws to hold the plasterboard in place without it popping.) Finally, I lined the two sides of the reveals with 20mm MDF (this was so I could drill adjustable pegs to fit the shelves on), filled and dry-lined all of this and painted it to finish.

For the shelves I used 20mm double-sided Oak veneered ply. I scribed the material to create the shelves to fit the curve. then lipped the front and back edges with thin solid oak, bending it to follow the line of the shelves. (Using 30 mm thick trims means you can’t see the pegs that hold the shelves in place and makes the shelves look more substantial.)

I finally stained the shelving to match the other wood in the lounge.