It's finished!
Okay, I was hoping to make it a one-weekend project and it extended into the week but all told my time and materials cost was around $250 in plywood and 12(ish) hours of labor.
Putting the shelves into the cabinets went pretty quick and was pretty easy. I made some supports out of the offcut from the lower divider / shelf support that were 12-1/4" long. I set these up on either side of the shelf, then using gentle hand pressure on top of the shelf to keep it from slipping I fastened them in place with pocket hole screws.
I've used plywood for shelf spacing in the past but that's always been 3/4" plywood, often the full depth of the shelf. One thing I found that I really appreciated about these was the ability to get to the pocket holes between the supports. Also, being double layers of plywood they were able to stand on their own.
I do have one picture of the shelves not being packed with games.
I'd have gotten a picture of the completed closet empty but I needed to empty one of the old bookshelves to be able to comfortably get into the left side to install the shelves. So, what's on the shelves is the contents of one of the two small bookshelves that had been shoved into the corners of the closet.
All in all, I am happy with the final results. It's definitely on the utilitarian side but it is still solidly built. It has slightly more storage than our previous arrangement. I think I might have done some bad math when calculating how much additional storage I was going to get. I was expecting a little more than the 8(ish) ft of empty shelf space but that's fine. I think there will be enough space for our games that have gotten scattered around the house and we're not big game purchasers so we should be good for a number of years.
Future enhancements might include:
- Add some more bracing under the bottom shelf cleats to transfer some of the weight to the floor
- Add a face frame to the upper shelves to hide gaps and make it prettier
