La Forge Populaire--> Royale and Another Bookshelf

It's been more than a year since anything's been posted here.  Among the disciplines/hobbies/interests I'm engaged in, blogging is the first activity to go by the wayside when my spare time becomes limited.  Anyway, woodworking/carpentry had also been in a several month hiatus. Another activity, reading had continued. As we like to keep the books we read, at least at this stage of our lives, between DW and I, we ran out of bookshelf space. Adding another bookcase was not an option given our furniture arrangement.
So I added a bookshelf. Simple enough, except when its 12 foot long and 13 feet above the floor. Since placement was over a clerestory bank of windows, support underneath, while best structurally, would look- sorta pasted on. A pure floating shelf design was not feasible with the shelf thickness I had in mind and with the weight bearing capacity needed.
A triangular bracket secured from above would solve the above issues and also serve as bookends if the brackets could be modified so that books could lay flat up against the bracket. Here is a Home Depot $13 bracket used for support.

The solution probably a bit over-engineered, as I have more than one accused of, was as follows. It allowed to have the bracket screwed on securely first to wall and shelf, then covered so that a book can lay flush and perpendicular to the bracket.

This part of the project made good use of my miter jack jig. A post a while back called it a Populaire as I did not spring for the expensive wood screw and assoc hardware associated with Benchcrafted's design. Well, my solution did not have sufficient torque, so I bought the wood screw and nut with much improved function. At least I tried the least expensive route first.

There was a bit of a time constraint as I needed to have the parts finished prior to having DW's family over for Mother's Day. There was no way I was going to be able to install the shelf without an extra pair of hands on another ladder. It's my good fortune that my in-law family is used to my putting them to work when they come visit.

Half an hour of setup, bolting and removing aluminum ladder from living room and we could proceed with Mother's Day. The next day I anticipated an hour's worth of time putting the covers over the brackets which fit flush and perpendicular. Only one little problem:

Due to my over-engineering, chopping off the overhang would not solve the problem as there is still metal and 2 different types of wood to cover up. Here is a close up of the cap with to cutout to accommodate the metal bracket end.

Here are the shelf brackets/bookends in place.

So I'm thinking the project is complete and I'm looking at the shelf from below installed, To my dismay it looks wrong. While the square ends work for the shelf above it because of the pattern, the lower shelf needed rounded ends.

 I was not about to take down the shelf to do this, so the cutting had to be done in situ and with hand tools to minimize dust. A good coping saw, hand planes and rasps let me finish before noon and with minimal dust production. The added shelf space should provide sufficient space for a year's worth of additional book hoarding vs home library expansion.