Again with the shelves?

As you all must remember from such classic posts as "What in the...?" and "Stockholm", we at the C fambily have had quite an ongoing saga regarding shelves. I think this is finally drawing to a close with this one, last shelf placement. This is the shelf that was previously in the compooter room and was replaced in "Stockholm". Well, it has been sitting on its back in the garage on top of the old piano stool that we don't use any more that is on top of the table saw that I broke and was nearly killed by, but that I haven't disassembled to make small enough to throw out yet.

It's also, colloquially, a POS. Junk pressboard with a decal of wood. Got it, I think, from K-Mart. Can't remember if it's from when we first moved to sunny Kalifornia or if it's from back in Rochester. I think it's a Sauder, but I can't remember for sure.

The Mrs., ever in love with shelves, felt that stacking this thing up on our junk heap in the garage was not the right thing to do. So she searched high and low in the house for any remaining wallspace that did not already contain shelves, and she came up with a placement. In The Childrens's playroom next to the piano.

In case you were wondering, The Childrens's playroom was called "the living room" by our realtor when he showed us the house. Silly realtor.

Now I'm going to switch to photo-blogging mode. All these were photos were taken using a Canon PowerShot A520. An excellent digital camera for the price, though the shot cycle rate is downright pokey.

This first shot shows the "diamond in the rough" spotted by The Mrs. Yep, an inexperienced shelf-space hunter probably would never have noticed that little patch of non-shelved wall back there between the piano and the curtains. Especially since it already has a stack of plastic storage drawers right next to the piano which is barely visible as it's tucked behind the kitchenette/grocery store. It will become more visible in later photos after it is relocated to make room for the shelves.


After clearing a space, the next step is to install the earthquake straps that keep it from falling over and smashing The Childrens's heads like so many DDT-weakened eggs. Now, here's the one big annoyance with this shelf placement: it's on an exterior wall. My Zircon studsensor doesn't work at all right on exterior walls. I'm not sure why. Maybe the extra 1/8" of drywall thickness. Maybe the stucco exterior.

On normal scan mode, it found a stud every 4 inches. On deep scan mode, it found but one stud. Naturally, upon drilling a pilot hole where it found the stud, I hit nothing but air. I've learned not to trust this thing on exterior walls, so I drill the smallest hole I have a bit for. Then, when I hit air, I just keep drilling more and more holes until I eventually find a stud. In this photo, the studsensor said the stud was where the rightmost hole is. If you look carefully, you can see it only took me 14 more tries to actually find the stud. The next stud to the right turned out to be about 3" over.


Upon further inspection, I'm pretty sure the deep scan mode actually found the redwood 4x4 fencepost on the other side of the wall. I'd need to go outside with the tape measure to know for sure, and it's raining.

Below we now have both the earthquake straps installed, and HannieC is mugging for the camera just like she has in previous pictures. You can see the aforementioned plastic storage drawers have migrated to the right, next to the curtains, from their old home up next to the piano.


Next, I have to make a new hole in the cardboard back for the earthquake straps to go through. The studs here are the standard 16" on center spacing, but for some reason, they were 18" in the first location (which was in the old house). I just kind of snaked the straps through the non-standard spacing when we moved the shelves to this house, but today I decides to fix the holes. Who knows why. The new straps are light tan. The old Velcro on the left is black, from a darker-colored earthquake strap. This shot is up into the top shelf, and these straps are secured on the underside of the top of the bookcase.

This is the mess left by my Leatherman Wave saw when I sawed through the back. Heck of a useful little tool that thing is. (Man, if I had a dollar for every time I heard that.)


HannieC likes to help. Here she is pitching in with the cleanup. Note her change of outfit. She's off a gymnastics Easter Egg Hunt, leaving me home alone with MaxieC, who is napping at the time.


Finally, done! I didn't put the kitchenette/grocery store back in place yet to allow a space for The Mrs. to get in and out to fill up the shelves. I'm sure I will hear about how The Childrens's playroom was all organized and I went and made a mess of it and didn't clean up after myself...