Shelves

One of the first projects we finished was the bookshelves for David's office. His space is limited, and as it was.... kind of a disaster. The idea was to make some pretty shelves that would also give him much more usable space.

We were using birch covered plywood that got rescued from the ocean in the boat sinking disaster. This caused problems, mainly, the wood veneer was damaged from all that tossing about and subsequent scuffing that came from dragging it back up the beach to the lodge. The veneer was so thin, any sanding we did to try and fix the damage had to be very very light so as not to grind right through.

Here I am, very gently sanding

Oliver did a ton of measuring, since we didn't have a big saw to put the wood on and the cuts had to be as close to square and exact as possible to make strong shelves. So we measured a lot, and used a little hand saw propped against a straight sheet of plywood to make all the cuts.

Here he is routering places for the shelves to fit snugly into.

The routering idea was a good one, and ultimately made it possible to not use any sort of backing to keep the shelves standing straight and tall. However, the bit died pretty early on, and it was difficult to sharpen to a point that could be used to finish the project. That delayed us a lot.

Once the routering was done, we matched up all the shelves and placed them so that the ugly and damaged ones would be either high up or low down, and the prettiest would be in plain view. Then we glued them all in, hammered in some little nails and finally tapped them in with an awl so they we could putty into the holes to cover the nails.

With all this done, we still had to make trim to cover the front. We found the most interesting pieces of pine 2 x 4's we could and then cut them really thin. After watching Oliver stick his fingers distressingly close to the blade of the table saw, I made him a push stick (thanks Dad).

Here is a close up of the top of the shelves, and the trim being glued

Once all that was done, we sanded the sucker down for what seemed like the hundredth time and carried it into the office. Then while I coated it in a clear varnish, Oliver went outside and started the second one.

Here they are installed, with some cleaning of cobwebs and sticky notes also done to the office. David was surprised!

The left side

And the right side

With these completed using around $70 worth of supplies, Oliver and I are considering never buying another piece of furniture again. This would be more shocking if I had, in fact, ever bought one before. Ha! Strangely enough, it is hard to go dumpster diving for home furnishings in the bush of Alaska.

But in reality, they are very pretty shelves and if a person had a proper shop (instead of a four wheeler and trailer topped with a piece of blue foam, and miscellaneous cordless power tools) it would be fun and easy to build your own furniture. Not to mention super cheap!

*Well dad, what do you think?*

`Danielle