So here I am, walking in and out of the house everyday, looking at all the stuff I keep by the front door, and thinking to myself, “I don’t like all this crap sitting here in a pile”.
So I get this wild idea to build a little shelf to sit on the trim piece. A couple of key points here:
1) I don’t want to damage the trim in any way.
2) I don’t want anything permanently affixed to the trim/wall.
3) I don’t want anything freestanding taking up more floor space.
I make a little space on the porch, gather up some stuff, pet my helpers, and start goofing around.
I come up with an idea of putting one large board on top, a small spacer board under it to match the thickness of the trim, and then a third board at the bottom to match the depth of the trim underneath. In my mind, this thing will just slide right onto the trim, and not fall off because the bottom board prevent the whole thing from ‘tipping away from the wall’, which means it can’t fall (physics and sh*t).
So I cut, I build, I tweak, I fiddle…
and eventually I get to the part where I can test the thing out!
Now, I tested it with just the center mount in place, but I didn’t snap a pic there because I was too excited with my results. I tweaked it some, added side supports, and stuck it back up there.
I decided I liked it, so I took it back outside, sanded it down, then brought it back inside, put it up, moved it around a bit, and finally got it how I liked it.
I got done with it, cleaned up my mess, put my stuff away, and pondered on the shelf for a little bit. Digging through my ‘junk’, I found some hooks I liked, added them to the shelf, and then fiddled around it with a little more. Eventually I ended up with this:
Took me less than an hour, using scrap materials and leftover fasteners from other stuff, and that included time to pet the helpers, get a drink, pause and ponder the sky, and of course find my tape measure that I just $%^&*(*&^% had RIGHT HERE.
I did sand it down nice and smooth with 80 grit, just to take the rough edges off, so there’ll be no splinters or unpleasant touches.
Were I more interested in a nice finish for myself, i’d fill in all the little imperfections with wood putty, sand it down with 80 grit, then 120, then 150 grit before painting, OR, I would sand it down with 200 grit and apply a stain finish.
As you’ve seen with my other projects, the ones I do for myself are all about function, and little about finish, because I just need stuff that works.
Next up is to see how my house-mate reacts to it (they were asleep the whole time I was building this!).
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