Building a shelf for my living room

That looks like a great plan. I don't know about which way to build out if your options, but two things come to mind. First, those spans for shelves are pretty long, and may be susceptible to sagging over time. Look into methods that can prevent that, like a little runner of wood underneath to add strength across the whole span. The other is about electrical needs. Are the outlets already there?

For what wood to use, look at what plywood is available and start costing it out. Baltic birch ply is very nice to use for stuff like this, but is expensive. You want something pretty thick and strong if you are going to put any weight on it. Records weight a ton.

Do you have a table saw or track saw? That will make this much easier.

What did you make the first diagram in? Before making this, I'd make the digital model to scale, i.e. With the thickness of the ply worked in and hashing out where and how to join and attach it all.

You will likely want to support the shelves with some cleats like this:

You can use the same ply, or a wood which looks nice with it.

You may want to build the bottom first for this project. Unless the vertical supports go all the way to the floor, it won't be more stable by doing them together. Unless I an misunderstanding some of this.

Is there premade stuff here, or are you building cabinets too?

Edit: I built something like this, but I just hung shelves directly on the wall with brackets, because it was way easier and cheaper.

Learn some kind of jointery, I recommend dowels for a beginner. Plenty strong and doesn't require a lot of tools. A dowel jig, some dowel pins and a drill are all you need.

You might be thinking of screwing or nailing it all together, but you'll get a stronger, longer lasting, and better looking result from glued jointery.

For attaching it to the wall you could go high end and do a French cleet, which makes it easy to move, but that requires some intermediate table saw cuts. Something easier would be joining some blocks to the back of the unit in places where they'll meet a wall stud and be relatively hidden. Then drill a pilot hole through the blocks into the stud and drive a screw through that. You could countersink the screws and use a plug to hide the screw head.

I'm not a carpenter, I'm a handyperson, so I'm not used to trying to make things pretty. But I do put a lot of shit on walls.

If I were trying to do this, I would not do it all in one piece. (NOT trying to discourage, your plan is just beyond my abilities.) I would be making the three spanning shelves by mounting furring strips or small lumber (don't know your country's dimensional lumber standards) to the walls horizontally across the studs and on the side with construction lags, and setting the long shelf on that and bolting it down to the frame. Or just using shelf brackets along their length.

Ok, ok ok ok after reading your questions and the actual problem statement you're gonna be in for a bit of fun. You said the wall is brick, is it bare brick, brick with plaster over, or a plaster and lath wall inside with a brick exterior?

Regardless, (again as a handyman not a carpenter or cabinet maker) I would probably just mount the shelves to the wall individually instead of trying to make one cohesive furniture piece. For brick, that's going to be sleeve anchors (around half the depth of a brick) and a hammer drill with appropriately sized masonry bit into the wall. With brackets or the bolted down rear runner you could do the whole thing without those two middle verticals.

Your shelves can be softwood, it's sturdy enough if it's sitting on brackets every 75-100 cm. Probably farther with hardwoods. If you're going to paint it definitely don't bother with hardwood. If you want pretty stained wood, find a hardwood that looks good and a stain that looks good and a sealant and throw them together and see what happens.

As for the desks, drawers, and cupboards, cabinetry is basically wizardry as far as I'm concerned. That's woodshop stuff. I'd personally be making the desks as dead simple tables and trying to find premade files or drawers or whatever.

Here’s a thought, no matter how you go about your project:

Minimize cutting and make other people use their tools to do it for you.

Use sheet goods (like plywood) and work out a design that’ll accept 16”x8’ sections. The big box stores will absolutely make three cuts at their bigass saw, and if you ask for them to be in thirds (Baltic birch plywood the long way the long way) you can probably chat the teen they send out to provide special assistance in the board cutting area into making those three cuts with all the sheets on top of one another so you get a bunch of 16” wide shelves!

Now people are gonna talk about how you’re not gonna get precisely the same width out of this scheme, and they’re right. Those same people are gonna say you will have some saw burn especially if you rely on the teen from the simpsons to cut three sheets of plywood stacked up on top of each other and they’re right.

But none of that matters because you get to choose which sections go where. Just put the one with an extra 1/16” on the bottom and the one with a missing 1/16” on top and the ones with something in between in the middle. Looks great!

But what about the saw burn? Who cares, you’re gonna sand and stain it anyway.

But the full width is more than 8ft! Doesn’t matter, you get twelve sections you can match widths to and hide the slop in the back of the shelf.

Work lesser not more-er.

What experience or skills do you have already?

what tools?

Are you going to be building in this room or do you have workshop space somewhere else?

is this a "money is no object" situation or are you on a tight budget or what?

That’s Not How I Would Do It

But I may not understand.

It will be cheaper, easier and less work to hang shelves directly onto the wall, especially if you are going all the way across and the wall is brick. You will need a hammer drill and some masonry bits, but you would need those anyway to attach anchors for a freestanding shelf.

Someone else said to just do a tv wall mount. That’s another good point just make sure you save the tv stand base thing in the closet.

Since I don’t have to have a place to put the tv or something to hold up shelves and don’t have a project anymore because everything got done in an afternoon, I would get an old console stereo and either integrate my hi fi into it or modify it to be a piece of furniture. I always hate to see those things get mutilated but if it saves you the actual work of cabinetry it’s whatever. You might end up wanting to fix up the old console and they always amaze people once they’re kicking again.

You may not be able to use box store dimensional lumber. It’s been real low quality here for a while and everyone from elsewhere has been saying the same thing. Consider a high quality ply sheet or just go to the lumberyard and pay for boards and someone to mill them to size.

woah cool project, i don't know anything but good luck!!

A good way to begin construction is to build a 'toe-kik' basically a short, flat box at the base of it with regularly spaced cross beams, and beams that go over area of high weight. Place it on the floor with a large level beam on top and begin shimming it so it remains at the level position. You can also take blocks from 2x4s or 2x6s that are shorter than the width of your cross beams and place them so they are flush to the floor and screw them into the toe-kick. This will give you a level surface to build on top of.

If God favors you, you will get the box square and fit snugly against your walls on your first try. It is important to get the box square and places before you add your crossbeams.

Also take off the moulding around the area you are working. That will make it look more flush and nice when you are done. Good luck!