Home Is Where the Shelves Are

My bookshelves are finished (already).  They were easy, inexpensive, and basically revolutionary.  Our books have been in piles around the house for almost two years.  Finding that one book has been hard.  Treasures have been damaged in frequent avalanches.  And it all looked so untidy.  One evening this week, I lit a floating candle in a teacup, chose a book from my new shelves and curled up on the couch.  Soon, Beth was snuggled next to me with her book.  Then Mary joined us with hers.  We sat together quietly reading and it felt so good.

I built five bookshelves using twelve inch wide laminated pine boards that I picked up at Home Depot.  If you would like to build a shelf like mine, cut a thirty-one inch piece for the top, two thirty-five inch pieces for the sides, and three twenty-nine and a half inch (the width of the top, minus two times the thickness of the wood) pieces for the shelves.  If you buy two eight foot lengths, you should be able to do this with very little waste.

I wanted there to be ten and a half inches between the top and the first shelf, and between the first shelf and the second shelf, which left just a wee bit less than twelve inches between the second shelf and the bottom shelf.  I attached all the pieces using wood glue and two and half inch screws.  Before I got out my drill (it's yellow, pink drills may be against my religion...but if you have a pink drill, we can still be friends), I used my square to mark the side boards.  I put lines on the insides to indicate where the shelves would go, and evenly spaced dots on the outsides for the screws.  Then I countersank the screws and covered them with wood filler, which made them invisible.  Then I sanded, primed, and painted.  Then I grinned.

Pull Up a Chair

 

I bumped into these chairs more than a year ago on Ana White's blog.  I bought plywood and two by twos about nine months ago.  I finished them last week.  I think part of why they took so long to build is that some of the joins were difficult to clamp and glue takes a long time to dry.  There was a lot of waiting and not a lot of momentum.

 

 

I get that building ten chairs is a big project, and I think I've mentioned that I have five children...whom I homeschool.  I'm a little busy.  But nine months is a lot of time to have a pile of wood sitting around.  I think if I were honest, I would say I sometimes avoided working on them because I was afraid.

 

 

 I really wasn't afraid of failing.  There was a lot of failing and it wasn't a big deal.  I cut things too short, drilled pilot holes too close to the edge, forgot to square until after the glue dried, set the compound mitre saw to the wrong angle, broke bits, lost bits, left half a bucket of wood filler out to dry, dropped a clamp on my toe, again.  I was afraid of rejection.

 

 

Most of the people in my life think I'm neat.  This project wasn't going to change that.  The only person whose opinion of me was on the line was me.  Now that I see that, I've decided to try something different.  I really enjoy these chairs.  They're beautiful.  I'm proud of the work, and perseverance I put into them.  But I'm not going to accept myself more because of this success.  Nor am I going to accept myself less because I anxiously dodged.  I'm just right.  I'm building bookshelves this week.  I don't feel scared at all. 

 

Sometimes I do hard things

Three and a half years ago, Annie said, "Let's build Mom a deck," and I thought she was nuts.  I hadn't built anything since that heart shaped CD rack in ninth grade shop.  She wasn't a builder either.  "How hard can it be?"  It was hard.  Ripping out the old boards, we sounded a bit like Xena.  Then we accidentally took out a support for the still healthy upper deck.  Using the circular saw was terrifying.  I cried.  And lost 10 pounds.  And then there was a deck.

A couple of months later, I bumped into Ana White's incredible blog full of free plans for great furniture, and decided to try.  I bought my own tools.  I got laughed out of a lumberyard.  And I built this and this and two of these.

A year and a half ago, we moved into our new home with a square dining room and I thought it was too bad I could never build a round table because that was just what was needed.  I had always wanted a round table.  And then I saw this picture.  And I got myself in way over my head.  The table saw was scary.  High school trig did not come back easily. Several boards clamped together side by side tented in the middle.  Perfectly smooth end grain became rough when stained.  The quart of white wash that the cat spilled was more white than wash.  And then there was a round table.