Baby Bookcases

• No need to dip into the preschool fund for a toddler library. Just attach several old apple crates or wine crates together with metal braces, sand to remove splinters and paint the new bookcase a shiny apple green. The shelves are deep enough to accommodate a few bears and bunnies that like to read as much as the small people in the nursery. Make a gable roof for the bookshelf with two angled boards, attach it on top, and paint the whole contraption to look like a doll house. It can house the book collection or serve as a doll house as the need dictates.
  
  

Cool Bookcase

• Art bookshelves designed from city maps are webby, interesting street grids at odd angles that still manage to hold a lot of books. Your shelves might echo the layout of Paris, Berlin or the Big Apple. For smaller cities, you may need to convince the local cabinet maker to expand his skills. The shelves are open, contained in a conventional rectangular or square frame, and can hold room accessories, photos, sculpture or media as well as books, but they star as bookshelves in a contemporary living room. A bookcase this cool might inspire you to curate your book collection to include some cutting-edge literature as well.
  
  

Bookcase Bounty

• If you have more shelves than books, just turn the shelves into furniture. Shift a skinny bookcase on its side, add a cushion and you have a bench. Stack magazines inside the shelves for extra storage, and add casters to make it mobile. Hide the bathroom or a secret room with a bookshelf door. A wall of books with one bookcase that swings out on low casters and hinges masks the door to the guest bathroom, a closet-office, or a passage to a studio or pantry in your house. A double-wide bookcase makes a good room divider-headboard in a loft or open space. The “bedroom” side is a blank wall for art or just a backdrop for pillows. The books on the other side are a library, and the unit gives an illusion of privacy and frees you from having to make the bed.
  
  

Collector’s Wall

• Mismatched bookcases lined up against one wall are a shabby chic installation that holds books, media, tchotchkes and home office supplies. The bookshelves may be endlessly rearranged throughout the house or every time you move. Keep them all in one room in this apartment, and distribute them in the living room, bedroom and kitchen in your next place. You would pay a mint to buy a coordinated wall of shelving, but a random collection has personality at a modest price tag.