Neverending Shelf Story

Project 'Office Shelves' continues! Last I mentioned them (see here), I explained the extreme lengths we went to to create some shelf brackets for ourselves.

And then we were very happy to move on to actually creating a place to mount said brackets! Meet the wall in question!

Tom notched out three timber posts so they could fit around the existing bracing on the wall, and then we started marking exactly where the brackets would go, so they would be nice and level across each of the timber posts.

Then, because we're suckers for punishment and clearly couldn't imagine making life easy for ourselves, we decided that the brackets would be strongest if we also notched out sections in each of the posts for them to slot into, instead of just attaching them straight off the post.

The boys got to work, and fifteen notches later...

And a few breaks for some push-ups on Daniel's part... we had some very mangled looking posts on our hands!

We then drilled through each of the bracket notches so that we could screw in the brackets easily (because the posts are hardwood it would be near impossible to get screws into them without pre-drilling)...

Until each notch looked like this.

Meanwhile, I undercoated the brackets, just to cut down on a bit of work later...

And we started the painstaking process of attaching each of the brackets into its respective notch, which involved a bit of extra notching in some cases so that the brackets would fit snugly.

We discovered that rubbing the screws through some slightly wet soap before trying to screw them in made things a lot easier! Insert gratuitous joke about lubrication here.

And after way too many hours, we were left with these very strange-looking, and slightly delicate posts. With all the notches cut out they lost a bit of their strength, which meant we had to be very careful carrying them upstairs. We weren't too worried about the lost strength though, since they would regain most of it once they were braced against the wall.

And the moment we'd been waiting for! We started attaching the posts to the wall!

It was when we'd installed two of the three posts that I realised something. Since our plan is to build a wall to the right of the shelves to close in the office from the front sleepout/verandah properly, we couldn't attach our notched post straight to the house on the right. We needed to insert a wall board (a VJ) between the existing grey post you see on the right of this shot, and our notched post, so that the wall we eventually build running perpendicular to the shelves actually looks like the existing front wall of the house.

Have I lost you? It's really hard to explain properly! Hopefully if I keep trying it will begin to make sense.

So we removed our notched post carefully, and went and found a nice long VJ board (the boards all of our house's walls are made of) that we had very fortuitously purchased a few months ago. We did some quick paint scraping to give it a smoother surface, and then screwed it in in exactly the place where our notched post had been.

Here you can see it in place, half paint-scraped, half not (since our notched post would cover the un-scraped half).

This is a view standing in the front sleepout/verandah. The yellow part of the wall on the right is the existing front wall of the house. You can just see the half of the grey VJ board sticking out to the left of the yellow post. Then further to the left is Tom's hand holding our notched (and bracketed) post slotting it into position behind the VJ.

The goal is to make the area on the left of that photo look exactly like the wall on the right, so if we didn't sandwich the VJ board in there that wouldn't be possible. Just as well we realised in time!

So. With VJ boards dealt with, we could finally get back to installing our bracketed posts! The white boards hanging over the brackets in this shot are the back board for each shelf, which we also had to notch out to fit around each post.

We then began the next painstaking stage of what was becoming an incredibly painstaking project altogether, and started installing little scraps of timber to support the very back shelf, so it wouldn't keep hanging loosely because of the notches.

40 screws later, the back board of the shelves was in securely!

And because this wouldn't be a Neverending Shelf Story if I gave away the ending already, I'll leave it there for now. These shelves are going to be amazingly strong, but man oh man have they taken FOREVER to complete! I promise the next installment will involve a happy ending! And maybe even a plot twist!