Finally, Finally, Finally Finished!

Well, mostly.

It has been a two-month-long, arduous process, filled with setbacks, and—oh my!—lots of puzzles to solve. But at last my wall of shelves is...OK, mostly...finished. So, there are lots of pictures to go with this story.

It all started because I wanted more shelf space—and better-looking shelves, too.

So on February 6, I started tearing things apart—removing sheetrock, shelves, and wall studs.

Then I had to move an outlet that was smack in the middle of the new shelf space.

When Bruce was home on a break he fixed some of my lighting and wiring woes.

Finally it was time to start on the shelves. This is the base
of the whole thing. 

Now, there are two things about starting to build the shelves: 

1. I realized that this might not be the best start to making a square, level piece of furniture. But, after using the "Think System" a lot, it was still the best plan I'd come up with. And, 

2. When this piece was in place I realized that the opening on the hallway side wasn't even; my shelf design wouldn't be symmetrical unless I changed something. :-/

So I had to put a wall stud back in, sheetrock the space, tape it, and mud it...an entire 5 1/2 inches of wall.

Now I was building in earnest. Here I am, putting in the web frame (that was a colossal pain to build!). This piece will help support the top drawer that goes in this bottom cabinet part of the unit.

And here is that cabinet, all built. And fairly square—and quite level, too! You can see in this picture that wood glue, wood filler, and my drill were my good friends throughout this process. Especially the drill!

But before I could finish building and installing the shelves, I had to solve another problem: My friend Daniel said that the junction boxes I'd installed (when re-wiring the outlet) needed to be accessible. I could put them through the living room wall, but that would be hideously ugly. I would have to figure out how to put them through the back of the shelf.

There's a few things to see in this picture: First, the pink circles: I loosened both of the junction boxes from the wall. And I exchanged the one on the left for an outlet. The blue arrow is pointing to the side of the shelf. Right now it's not attached; it's just sitting there so I can see if it will fit in place. The green, double-ended arrow is pointing to the two cubbies I'm going to add on to either side of the bottom cabinet. They are also not attached yet. They also made everything look much less square... :-/

Now I moved out to the garage to build the big shelves. I used cleats to hold these shelves in place. On the right, you see me putting some of the backing pieces onto the top shelves; I will not be able to access back part of this shelf once it's in place, so I had to attach the backing now.

It was time for the shelf to come into the house, and it took all three boys to maneuver it into place. It is big, and it is heavy! And it's tall—it only clears the ceiling by two to three inches. Happily, it fit right into it's intended spot in the hallway.

Now it was time to start on the living room shelves. If you look closely at this picture you'll notice a few things: Most obviously, the living room shelves standing in the middle of the living room floor. In the background you can see Lindsey (?) headed toward the stairway. :-) You can also see that the hallway shelf has all of its backings in place. And you can see the recently installed outlet hanging in space.

All right. I took this picture myself, and it took me a while to interpret it because of the weird angles (and colors!). So I labeled what you are seeing. What I was doing here is attaching the living room shelves to the hallway shelves so that they would now be one big unit. I got this cool jig-thing that allowed me to drill "perfectly aligned" holes into the edges of both boards that would be joined together. And most of them really were perfectly aligned; I only had to remove one peg which, for some reason, was about half-an-inch out of place. Getting them together was a little tricky, and we couldn't just push them in together—the pegs fit very tightly into the holes. But, Hooray for furniture clamps! We put three clamps across both the hallway and living room shelves that were being joined, and as we tightened the clamps the shelves clicked right together. Whew!

Hm. Maybe I should have showed this picture before the last one... This is me, using the fancy jig-thing to align the holes in the two shelves. The top board is the living room shelf (clamped to the hallway shelf, so I can align the holes perfectly). Since the hallway shelf is just standing free out in the hall, I had to pull it toward me as I was pushing the drill forward so that it wouldn't all tip over! 

I don't usually like pictures of myself, but,
for some reason, this one makes me happy.

In the left-hand picture you can see me—with my trusty tub of wood-filler—looking up at the monstrosity I built. In the right-hand picture you can see my toes peeking through the bottom cabinet. You can also see that the shelves are attached together with all of their backings in place. And, in the left-center of this picture, you can see the junction box hanging in the air. (I had to replace the lower wire in this connection so that the box would fit where I needed it to go. This makes the third time I rewired this circuit.)

Why the iron?
I was able to reuse the old particle-board shelves that were in the hallway to begin with, but I had to make them narrower. With the finished edge cut away, these shelves would be ugly even after they were painted. So I bought something called Band-It—a 3/4-inch wide, thin, wood laminate strip that's been pre-treated with adhesive. Cut it to size, iron it on, and voila! Finished edges! It worked beautifully. (You are seeing the iron sitting on the unfinished shelf.)

If you look closely you might be able to see the newly-finished edge of the shelf on the left. (It really does look much better than the cut particle board.) More importantly, we got the outlet to fit into the shelf back. Yay!

Here's what it looks like from the hallway side (from the kitchen, actually). And it's ready to be painted! After twenty hours of painting—one coat of primer and two coats of paint on each side—we were ready for the next step in this long, long process.

What's this?

Lighting! One shelf goes through from the living room to the hallway, with no backing in-between. And this shelf is going to be lighted. Those tiny straps that hold the wires in place are actually the "loop" pieces of some skirt hooks and eyes. Being a seamstress turned out to be of use in this shelf project!

With five little LED lights in place, Ryan works on the electrical connections for them. Almost all of the wiring will be hidden inside the walls, so it needs to be done well. (Ryan helped me with several little steps throughout this whole project.)

On the left you can see the hole in the shelf-back that the junction box needs to fit into. In the right-hand picture you can see the extra support I had to build into the wall so that the box will have something to press against and be screwed into (otherwise those hefty wires will act like a spring and pop the box forward into the shelf). Hopefully I measured right, so the back of the box will rest against its support and not force the shelf to stand too far into the hallway.

Now that the shelves were built, connected together, painted, and wired, the real test was coming into play: Would they fit into place? I knew the hallway shelf fit, and I knew the living room shelf fit, but if there was a mistake or miscalculation when I put them together there could be a real problem.

And... it turns out that no amount of pushing, pulling, or twisting is going to get that shelf to fit into the living room; it's half an inch too tight on one side. So we pushed it back into the hallway, removed a wall stud, cut off a half inch of drywall, replaced the stud, and tried again.

That did the trick! Hooray!

It's in place!
But...what's with all the white?

Well, I screwed the shelves to the wall studs, and the 2x4s above them on both the hallway and living room sides (with some shims in key places). That thing is not moving. It also looks a little crooked. Hopefully the moldings will cover a multitude of little sins...

I painted the walls, put up the moldings, and they did cover up my sins. Beautifully.

I've had some friends (women of my parents' generation) ask, "How do you know how to do all these things?" and "Why are you doing man's work?"

Well, it never occurred to me that I couldn't do these things. Shelves are just horizontal boards attached to parallel, vertical boards. With some good measuring, a table saw (lent to me by some friends, and used with Brandon's help), and a drill I could do this. As for the wall removal... Well, destruction is pretty simple. And the electrical work? Ask people. And google.

And why am I doing man's work? Well, I don't really think of it as man's work; it's just a project to me. I guess the answer is that I wanted the shelves, I was pretty sure I could do it, and it really pleases me to see that I could, indeed, do it myself. 

The only thing I didn't do myself was build the drawers; I don't really have the tools to do a good job of them, so I asked the high school wood shop teacher if there was a student who would make them for me. He said it was a good possibility, but I haven't heard any more than that yet, so hopefully that will happen...

And now for the big reveal:

Hallway shelves BEFORE

Hallway shelves AFTER
(The bottom/center will be covered with a panel after the drawers and their hardware are installed.)

Living room wall, BEFORE

Living room wall, AFTER
(When the drawers are done, they will hold my wrapping papers, bows, tags, and computer paper. Yay!) 

So, I really think I achieved my goals of creating more shelf space and making the shelves more attractive. And I am pleased.

She broke our family's record...

Jessica broke her foot Friday night. :-(

We had all been having a "sort the books" party, and someone mentioned that they needed ice cream. (I'm not sure who, but—really—who doesn't need ice cream?) And, since Lindsey was planning to go to the store at 10:00—so she could talk to a friend when her shift ended—she said she'd get some ice cream, and did anyone want to go with her? So Jessica went. Or tried to.

Look at all of those books! And that's after we shelved half of them!

Within minutes Jessica was hopping back in through the front door, leaning on Lindsey. She took a wrong step off of the porch steps and hurt her foot. When I looked at it I thought it was probably a sprain; she could wiggle her toes, and move her foot a little (although painfully). But I wasn't entirely sure. Her foot seemed to be sort of bent in a spot that a foot shouldn't bend—not a lot, but it was crooked. It was swelling—which I thought may have been what made the foot look bent—but the swelling didn't seem excessive for a sprain. There was no bruising, but it was very sensitive even to a light brushing of the skin... Hm.

So we laid her on the floor with her foot up on the ottoman, put ice on the foot, and we watched an episode of Star Trek while Lindsey went to the store to talk to her coworker, and now to buy an ACE bandage as well. And ice cream.

A black ACE bandage, an ice pack, a bottle of ibuprofen, a warm, furry blanket, and her own, personal pint of ice cream. (And a nice mom who will take pictures of her in her misery...)

During the show Jessica calmed down, and seemed to not be as miserable, so I was becoming more sure that it was just a sprain. I wrapped her foot and sent her to bed, with the plan to go to the Urgent Care as soon as they opened in the morning. Jessica said she slept just fine, and her foot didn't seem to be hurting as long as she didn't put weight on it, so we were hopeful for a sprain.

Nope!

We unwrapped it at the doctor's office, only to find all this bruising and swelling. This doesn't bode well...

She broke her pinky-toe metatarsal. The doctor put his fingers tip-to-tip and said, "This is what the bone should look like." Then he moved one finger a tiny fraction and said, "This is what her metatarsal looks like."

Bummer.

So she has a post-surgical shoe to wear, her very own crutches, and an appointment with an orthopedist to be set for about a week out.

The girls and their friend Ruth Ann got her the colorful stuffed bunny you see by her foot; they also got her some Oreos and a package of candy. Is it worth breaking your foot for?

Bruce and I have often remarked on how lucky we've been to have raised eight kids with no concussions, or broken bones, and less need for stitches than we could count on two hands. But I guess we spoke too soon; Jessica just broke that record.

Poor Jessica!