GIRL POWER!!!!!!

One of the reasons that I have not blogged in a while is that my mom was here for a visit. She lives in Arizona, and decided to come for a visit. We timed her visit to coincide with B’s being out of town for a class. He went up to Minneapolis to stay in a luxurious hotel for a week and be waited on! Mom and I stayed behind with the kids. The two of them get along famously, so it’s not like they were avoiding each other (that has been asked!).

While he was gone, Mom and I decided to get busy on the house. One wall has had some work done to it—a doorway was moved. Part of the wall was plaster and lathe, and the other part was sheet rock. However, the seams were not clean, and you could really tell the outline of the old doorway. Unfortunately, there wasn’t really much we could do except sheet rock over the plaster, or maybe take it all down and sheet rock the entire wall. I could not skim coat or come up with a “fix” good enough to apply paint to—that is why they were so fond of wallpaper and paneling. A couple of walls like that are my big reason for “analysis paralysis” when it comes to the walls of my house. Not knowing how I was going to solve those huge problem areas was a reason for not proceeding.

We fixed the wall by constructing shelves over the entire wall. Talk about girl power! We built them 10 feet wide by 8.5 feet tall. I even made doors for one section, and have plans to create doors for two other sections. Let me just tell you that while shelves themselves are not particularly hard, the shelves that I made were tough. We made them so well, they will last the life of the house. Plus, we had to level and plumb them when the walls are not. I think we did an excellent job.

Let’s just say that when B came home, he was blown away. Given that he and I have been together for 19 years this year, I am sure he was not surprised that we got the idea and just did it. We could have sat around and drank margaritas all week! (Though we did have a few drinks, of course!)

In preparation, we visited the inspiration for my idea (all of my ideas are stolen) at a hotel in West Des Moines. They had a floor-to-ceiling bookcase that I immediately thought would suit our room. We then bought a prototype test board and samples of stain, and came home to choose a color that would match the wood in our home. It’s a reddish, golden honey color.

The next day we started the building process by hauling several hundred dollars’ worth of lumber home in my Honda CRV. Quite a feat, and there were several enjoying the show in the parking lot as Mom and I loaded it up. We then brought it all home and stained it.

The next morning we paneled the back wall with ¼” plywood. Then we constructed the frame and upright supports in the living room. We were sure to test first that the creation could be set upright without taking out the ceiling fan! We then set it up and secured it to the ceiling and floor. We would have secured it to the sidewall, but the wall was not straight, and would cause our sideboard to warp visibly. It was difficult enough with the top and bottom boards not being straight.

Then we drank heavily.

The next day we cut the shelves. In a perfect world, all of the shelves would be even, so we could “mass produce” them. Not in my house!! While we set the upright boards the same width, when it was all said and done, the width of the shelves ended up being anywhere from ¼ to ½ inch different. So we had to measure each one as we went. Some of the widths even changed once we secured the shelves to the uprights, so we ended up measuring and cutting as we went. We cut back and side shelf supports for each shelf (42 total, plus 14 shelves). We got all of the shelves cut, assembled, leveled, plumbed, and attached the second day.

We then went to the store and brought home another hundred dollars worth of trim.

And then we drank heavily.

The third day (and the day B was due home) we put the trim up. We expected it to be an easy job, and the one that would really create the polished, professional look of the piece. We were excited to get started. It did not go as well as the other days, or as easily as we expected. We had problems with the quarter round staying in the gaps because the boards did not meet the back wall (the very reason we bought the quarter round). I had problems creating the doors because the space over which they fit was not a uniform space (it was like a trapezoid). We got it finished about an hour before B came back, which left time for me to drag out all of our old knickknacks and souvenirs from our travels. Oh, and our books. Now, we have a lot of books. In our old (new) house, we had bookshelves built in around the fireplace because we had so many books. The majority of the shelves were filled with the books. We did buy a bookshelf for our existing house, and it’s chock full of books. When we added our “stuff” to the new bookshelves, however, it barely fills them up! That’s not to say that we’ll go looking for more stuff…

I plan to create more doors for the bottom portion of the shelves, so that the kids can store games and videos in them. I have a closet that is overflowing with that sort of thing, and I’d like them moved to a more accessible place. But I think I will take a rest for a week or so.

Here are some pictures of our creation. What do you think? (click on the photo for a slideshow of our progress)



Thanks Mom. You're the best. : )