I’ve been admiring Little Free Libraries for years! It’s such a fantastic idea — encouraging community and literacy at the same time while also providing a way to recycle books. It’s a win-win-win!

This fall, I decided to make my own. It turned out to be quite the project — not something for the faint of heart. Luckily, I’m very stubborn and was going to finish this thing come hell or high water. And now I’ll share everything I learned with you, so hopefully your DIY will go more smoothly than mine.

The resource I found most helpful was a blog by Renee Renovates. She walks through a list of supplies and every single step to build the library, so I won’t recount all of that here.

Here’s where I deviated from her plan: I used one sheet of 1/2″ plywood and two sheets of 1/4″ plywood because that’s all that was available at my local store. I used the thicker board for the back of the house and the thinner boards for the sides, and it worked out fine.

Renee advises priming and painting the pieces of the house before assembly. I was tempted to skip this step and paint later, but I followed her directions and was so glad I did. The library has lots of tight corners and would be tough to paint after assembly. Plus, you want all of the wood to be covered by paint, even the parts that aren’t visible to the eye or easily reachable with a paintbrush, because the paint will help with waterproofing.

Assembling the shell of the house was pretty easy. I added some extra corner braces like these to keep the main parts of the house together, and it seems pretty stable. Plus, the braces can be painted later, when you do touch-ups, so they won’t be too visible when your library is finished.

To make the library match our house, I skipped the scallop trim that Renee used and instead cut out an extra window in the front using a jig saw.

We painted the library the same color as our house (Bungalow Blue) and decorated the back with some leftover wall paper from our living room.

Following Renee’s wise suggestion, I covered every seam with silicone caulk. This type of caulk is made for wet spaces like kitchens and bathrooms, and it’s a devil to clean up. But if you wrap a baby wipe around your finger before smoothing silicone caulk into place, you’ll avoid the awful mess that usually follows. It’s one of my favorite hacks!

When it came time to add the cedar shingles, I was worried about the durability of the wood under the shingles, so I added a plastic bag over the wood and under the shingles. It was a bit tricky until I tried Loctite Max Premium — it’s the only adhesive I could find that held the plastic to the wood and held the cedar shims to each other.

After assembling the large door, it felt flimsy, possibly because I was using scrap wood and it wasn’t perfectly aligned. I reinforced the door with a cross piece of wood and aligned the shelf with that cross piece.

One important lesson learned: be very careful when cutting the polycarbonate! The first sheet I bought shattered when I cut it using a miter saw. With the help of the internet, we avoided disaster with the second sheet of polycarbonate by sandwiching it between two pieces of scrap plywood and securing the plywood to the polycarbonate using clamps. Then we used a circular saw to cut through the two pieces of plywood with the polycarbonate in the middle, and it worked! I wish I’d taken a picture.

After gluing the polycarbonate sheets to the door and the little window, I added a ton of clamps and let it dry for a day. For a little extra waterproofing, I added clear silicone caulk on the outside of the library everywhere the wood met the polycarbonate.

Then we dug a hole (which should have been deeper, in retrospect, because I can push on the pole and make it move). I took a shortcut and used expanding foam to set the pole instead of concrete. The shortcut was very, very speedy and easy, but time will tell whether it holds as well as concrete.

And there she is! I absolutely love that we have a little library on our front lawn. It’s prompted all kinds of jokes and silliness, like when someone dressed as Santa wandered by last weekend and opened the door to the library. Was he taking a book or leaving a book? Or just casting a wish on the books? It’s all a mystery!

Let me know, please, if you build a little library or if you already have one. I’d love to hear about the building process and the upkeep. Do you stock it with books regularly? Have you had any problems with moisture?

Happy reading!