Thursday, December 27, 2007

Shelf Building Extravaganza Day 2.

Day two dawned with warnings of a potential seven inches of snow in the West Hills. This was a bit worrisome, because it would have interfered with Chris coming over and helping with this whole project. Luckily, when I called, there was no snow where he was.

First, I cleaned out the sheds, which are shelf set one and two. This is the biking shed. It also holds our camping equipment and seasonal items. And luggage. Things actually stack very nicely in this shed. But shelves will help use the space in an even better manner.
This is the horrible garden/tool general house and yard work shed. It also has Matt's bike in it. This shed is so crowded, with everything on the floor, that I hate to go in it. I am most looking forward to fixing this shed.
It's a good thing Matt is out of town, because all items in both sheds, with the exception of the lawn mower and the cans of paint, are sitting on his side of the bed in our bedroom. I'll get them put back before he gets home. Anyway, bike shed, sans stuff.
We got the lumber and other supplies. Just in lumber, we got 15 lengths of 1X4X12, 2 lengths of 1X12X8, 4 sheets of particle board and 2 sheets of peg board. This all fit neatly in Chris' truck and we chugged home. At this point, the temperature had dropped and we had snowy rain. We unloaded into the living room and went out to eat.
Upon returning, we went to work on the particle board. That stuff is heavy! I have resolved to resume my weight training program. We cut it three sheets of it down to the correct sizes we needed for the shed shelves. Each shed has four shelves that are 24 inches deep and one shelf that is 12 inches deep. We are both good cutters, with nice straight lines, but cutting this time was much louder than when we were out in the yard. I remembered too late that I didn't have ear plugs in.
My wonderful Storage and Shelving Solutions book suggested finding the studs and then marking where they are with masking tape. So smart. It was much easier to locate them when there is a tape guide. Chris had to counter sink the holes to get the screws to lock into our metal studs, (I really hate metal studs) but I had a counter sinking bit left over from my building my loft bed when I lived in South Boston. So that was convenient. Here is the first back brace. It was soon joined by two side braces.
And then the shelf plopped down on top.
And, boom! Five shelves where there were none. I cut shelving brackets while Chris installed the shelves. We didn't bother to sand these shelves, nor will I paint them. These are working shelves, built for practice and utility, rather than aesthetics.

Thus ended day two.

1 comment:

Sara K. said...

WOW!!! Talk about a major project! Your brother is such a champ. It is so nice to have such a helper! :) I can't wait to see them all filled up with goodies! :) Yay organization. -S