Many people kinda wonder what I do in my free time. Jaime and I keep pretty private lives — So people hear rumors of me working on cars or building stuff, but unless you’re one of my unfortunate neighbors, stuff just “Happens” and people rarely see me actually do it… (Same goes for seeing me in shorts…)

So after busting ass for the last, 2-3.. err.. 9 Months, I was granted a little time off for good behavior. So I figured I’d finally build some shelving in our garage that Jaime sorta hinted at, but in the grand scheme of things, was just an excuse for me to get out of the house. In the end, it turned out to be Spring Cleaning + Complete Landscaping Redesign + TSOD (The Shelves of Doom) all in one. In other words, we got a crap load done, but ultimately Jaime is not letting me go to Lowes alone anymore… “.. Honestly Jaime, These Ferns Followed Me Home… Can we Keep em? ..” [Edit: Jaime Added Home Depot to that List as well… ]

All That aside, lets focus mainly on the “TSOD” — The Shelves of Doom! right now.

Goals
1. Take advantage of as much of the wall space as I can.
2. Make them crazy ass strong. ie. Strong enough to support Gavin since he is morbidly obese.
3. Make them Shallow enough so we can still pull cars into the garage. and still walk around them
4. Make a lockable cabinet for all my tools.
5. Keep the Washer / Dryer for our ‘Bonus Room’ Functional and useable.
6. Imitate as much crap as I could from the ‘New Yankee Workshop’ from PBS so that I can justify forcing Jaime to watch it.

Obstacles
1. Floor not level. Not even close.
2. Wall not straight or level. Not even close…
3. Fucking Norm Abrams.

The project actually went really smoothly, and looks really good. If fact, I really impressed myself. I really thank my father for all the time he made me spend with him building stuff growing up. However, I curse Norm Abrams for putting thoughts in my head that certain tasks like Gluing smaller boards together to make plywood was simple. It’s not. And if you don’t have supporting tools (ie. an expensive planer) You will never have satisfactory results. In fact, I challenge Ol’ Normy to do a project with the tools that most ‘Normal’ work shops will have. I didn’t fail (see my nice hand made doors in the picture) but I’m not 100% satisfied with the techniques I duplicated from the show.

Ok, enough yabbering, here are some pictures.

I really wish I had before pictures, so that you could truly appreciate what was done. Surprisingly, most people are really impressed by the crazy 1×2 bracing I made for all the shelves. It’s overkill, but I wanted to practice angles for when I do a massive crown molding project in a few weeks. My favorite part? The doors. They started as seven 6ft $.75 pine 1×4’s. I wanted to practice making sheet’s from smaller cheaper pieces of wood for some oak shelves I’m working on. But, It’s not worth it. I’ve decided to just buy pre-made sheets. I don’t care how easy Norm Abrams makes it look, it’s not worth saving 10%… It really isn’t..

There you have it… The infamous TSOD I have been talking about… What? Over Hyped? Me? Never…. ;)