Does anyone have one of the tidy books bookcases and are they any good?

[bodiddly]

I like the look of these so my ds can see his books easily and they take up so little room but was wondering whether they are worth the money as they are quite expensive. Or does anyone know of anything similar?

is that the one where the books are displayed with the cover facing out rather than the spine? If so, Ikea do shallow shelves which can be used for books or pictures for a couple of quid each. You could attach several to a wall for a fraction of the cost of that bookcase....

yes .. the one with the timber across the front of the shelves to hold the books in but so the front cover faces outwards. Do the ikea ones have something like this?

No they are just shelves so I suppose the books might be more easily knocked off by an energetic child....

Will see if I can find a link - think I mentioned them before on another thread...

www.mumsnet.com/Talk?topicid=1012&threadid=305624#6149654

Linked on the second last post

I keep looking at these an thinking they can't be that hard to make - how handy is your DH?

The Ikea shelves like this have a ledge at the front to keep the books from slipping forward, and the easy way to keep the books on is to screw a cup hook to the wall on each side and stretch netcurtain wire across from one to the other. Then tuck the books behind the wire.

We have one. It looks good, is well constructed and the children find it easy to get the books out. If you have a small bedroom it's useful as it only protrudes a few centimetres from the wall, which was why we bought it. It's probably not "worth the money" if you can find an alternative that works for you, but I bet you could resell it for a decent price on ebay after a few years.

We also had a bookcase made for us by our lovely local carpenter for older dd and he built a unit with hooks at the bottom, a sort of tidybooks style shelf in the middle and a standard bookshelf on the top, which is brilliant as now that she is 5 she has "proper" books as well as picture books, which need a different sort of storage. The carpenter charged us about £100 for building this thing (out of birch ply), which I think is about the same price as the tidybooks one.

my dp is pretty handy but works 6 days a week more often than not and is trying to get the rest of the house sorted so that leaves no time for carpentry I am afraid!

i like the idea of adapting something though as could do with 2 really and the tidy books bookcases arent exactly cheap

plastic crates with the books stood up so they can flip through them thus (but obv use cheap ones from Ikea etc) are a cheap way to do it - we used shoeboxes.

ive got something along those lines at the moment but they take up too much space on the floor ... i liked the tidy books bookcase as it is really slim

thanks for all the advice .. i will have a proper trawl through the ikea site when i get home this evening and see if i can find something suitable.

oh now this is more like it
or a tall one

what do you think of this one?

the caterpillar

i have a tidy books one and i love it.

can you really fit loads of books in it .. i think they say 85 but im sure that is an exagerration. what colour did you get?

(I'd still go for this kind if you're short on cash and floor space but have wall room - the pictures don't do them justice, they really disappear against a white wall.

you are probably right but the walls in his room are blue and they remind me slightly of the greeting card racks in our local newsagent and it puts me off a bit! they do look much more practical though ... maybe i need to sleep on it. ive just found a 30% off code for vertbaudet so i could get the caterpillar one for about £30 ... decisions, decisions!

We have a Tidy books one and I really like it and am sure there are at least 80 books in it now.
DS1 also loves it and find it easy to pick out books for bedtime - and put them back afterwards too.
You can get it on Jojomaman with the 10% mumsnet discount.
We have it in plain white with no letters and as they suggest it can be used by an older child to store DVDs/videos etc etc so it has a decent lifespan.
GLTC sell a similar thing but lower/wider in canvas which is about £40 which looks good too (agree the wire ones look a bit "commercial").

real dilemma now ... not sure whether to go for the tidy books one or the caterpillar vertbaudet one!

IMO the Tidy Books one will last longer and is less childish, so i think it works out better value, but of course its your decision. You could ask your DS?

not sure i would get much sense from him as he is 2.5!

I really liked the tidy book shelf- but not the price! my dh made us one out of scraps of plywood sheet and skirting board. varnished up it looks great. my ds is 2 and loves using it

we've got the wood colour with abc letters. it looks great on the wall in our kitchen/living room. doesn't jut out at all and is a great use of that space.
we have board books in it, so i doubt if there are 80 - but they are about 3 or 4 books deep.
it is great as it lets the children see their books face on.

i guess it depends where you are going to put it whether it is worth the money or not.

dh made a couple of shelves similar to the tidy ones (never heard of them before, just googled). very easy - piece of 1"x1" along the bottom and up the sides and a piece of ply accross the front. Painted them the same colour as ds's bedroom walls and put them up.

If making more I would probably go for 2"x1" to make it a bit deeper, but we can get 3/4 deep depending on the book.

It hardly took him any time to make, and diy shops (homebase definately) will cut wood (the ply) for 50p a cut. The painting took longer than anything else.

amidaiwish - does the wood version come up really light like birch or beech coloured? i cant decide between the white or the wood!