Step 1: Sand Sand Sand! Make sure you are starting with a nice, smooth piece of plywood. You sure don't want any of your kiddos to get a splinter while they're trying to enjoy their story!
Step 2: With a good solid carpenter's pencil, a square, and a tape measure, start tracing out your pieces. I used 3/4" plywood for the base, which measured 3'6" X 2'7" in order to place the sides alongside the base for stability. The four sides are cut from 1/2" and 3/8" plywood (according to your preference and availability). To make the window openings, I found that it was easiest to draw my box and drill large holes inside each corner. This will help your jigsaw turn the corner more easily. Just make sure your bit is a couple sizes larger than the jigsaw blade. I used a circular saw to make all my straight cuts and the jigsaw for my interior cuts.
Step 3: For any cut edge that wasn't exactly perfect, I took my wood plane and planed the edges until they were square. By leaving the edges uneven or jagged, the pieces will not fit properly at time of assembly. You can also use your sander to sand down the edges if they are rough or jagged.
Step 4: For the bookshelf pieces, make sure you only plan one shelf at a time. It is easy to forget that the blade itself takes away a small amount of wood away with it which will affect your measurement if you plotted out the entire sheet of plywood ahead of time. I was able to get most of my shelf pieces out of one piece of plywood, if I remember correctly. Unfortunately, one of my pieces of plywood was a little bowed, so I ended up cutting the shelves, stacking them out of the way, and weighing them down flat with landscaping blocks for a few days. That seemed to allow the bow to fall out of most of them.
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