January 9 – “Shelving up”

Yesterday Chris and I entered the world of our past and did something together that we haven't done in years.  We embarked on another journey into the realm of home improvement.  She has wanted for some time now to build some shelves in our storage room next to the actual laundry room.  It's where our freezer and an extra refrigerator and a lot of toys and games live.  One set of shelves in there is one we salvaged from one of the houses after Hurricane Ike.  It is a white steel garage shelf units.  It works fine. It's just not tall enough.  Chris wants one tall enough that the storage capacity can reach clear to the ceiling.    After measure the area from every perspective we could think of, we headed to Home Depot.  Chris had an image in her mind of exactly what she wanted, always a scary time in my life.  Mainly because if we can't find something that exactly matches that picture, then she has trouble releasing the image from  her mind so she can wrap it around something different.  Always makes for an interesting dilemma.   Our first decision was whether to get a box with a pre-fabricated shelf unit in it made from particle board or to collect the myriad of hardware and screws necessary to build one with wood.  The pre-fab stuff is really easy, but you have to settle for their dimensions.  So wood won.  Always my personal choice, even if she was going to paint it.  We decided to put up those metal strips and hook on the shelf holders.  Then she wanted to put up a side panel to hide whatever was on the shelf.  It was all in that picture inside her head.  We roamed the aisles for awhile, looking for just the right cut strips to match that vision, but nothing worked.  We needed a 14 inch depth and the widest they had was 12 inches.  So, off to the sheets of plywood.  We found some very nice cabinet wood sheets.  Which led to the next big decision – whether to let the guy there play with his power tool and cut it for us, or take it home and do it ourselves.  He won that battle.  We decided to save some time (and effort) and let the guy there cut it for us.  A sign said that after the first two cuts, each cut was $2.50, but our guy didn't charge us anything.  Worked out great for us.  The hardware stuff was pretty easy to locate, though I have to admit to asking for help.  I also got a stud finder to replace the one I lost two years ago.  Haven't needed one since then.    The first thing I discovered when we got home was that there was no battery included with the stud finder, so I made a quick trip to WalMart.  One problem solved.  And then came the question of the ages … where's the stud?   I followed directions to the letter.  "Slowly run the finder across the sheetrock.  When it detects a difference in density a light will come on.  Mark that spot.  Continue moving until the light goes out.  Mark that spot.  You have just indicated the location of the two edges of the stud."  Sounded easy.  And sure enough, the light came on and went off.  But the locations were totally random.  Either there were studs everywhere in there or something was a little off.  I watched and marked and finally gave up.  I decided to just guess and use the sheetrock anchors if I needed to.  I went the old fashioned way that we used to do it when we first got married.  I got a hammer and skinny nail.  I marked the places we needed a screw in the wall, then punched the nail in.  And to my amazement, every single marked spot had a stud, so I could just use wood screws to hold it up.    Meanwhile Chris was getting a jump on the painting.  She wanted the shelves to match the baseboard trim.  That just meant white paint, and we had some left over from the house "remodel."  The brackets went into place and I held up the long board that was to serve as the side wall.  It was so warped that I couldn't get it to stay even remotely in place.  Wish we had realized that when we bought it.  I went online to see if there was any way to fix a warped board.  It seemed hopeless at first, but finally there was one site that said with the right combination of moisture and weight on top, the board had a good chance of straightening up.  Sounded like a kid.  I laid it on the garage floor and put a big box full of stuff on it.  We'll see how it looks when we go back out there.  I hope cold weather has something to do with it.  We had a cold front come through today.  It's supposed to get in the 30's.   We finished a first coat on all the shelves, and even a second coat on one side of each one.  We'll wait until tomorrow to see how the warped one looks before we paint it.  Then it's a matter of shelving up.   Psalms 1:6 says, "For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish."   Father, thank you for watching me even when I don't act so righteous.  Amen.