rocket city digs

As I’m home sick with a cold, and no hope of symptom relief from my usual OTC drugs, I figured I’d pick an easy topic: shelves. Shelves are the small-space inhabitant’s zinc. It’s her TheraFlu. Her warm bath followed by Vicks Vaporub. Shelves save precious floor space, are reasonably easy to install, and best of all, they’re temporary. We’ve got them in every room in our house, and will probably have more by the time RocketBaby arrives.

Of course, in an earthquake zone, shelves have their problems; I wouldn’t want to be under one of our bookshelves in the event of anything higher than a 5.0. (RocketMan, BTW, seems to think the biggest concern with an earthquake is the building falling in, but I think I’m bringing him around to the reality that stuff falling is a more likely scenario.) As with many ideas I post here, they could put a ding in your security deposit; unless you’re going for the freestanding kind (which take up floor space! boo!), shelves require holes drilled in walls. But in the case of the shelves below, only twelve holes, in total, were required. Not bad for holding up 48 feet of books.

Originally, these shelves were in the office, but since the office has been designated as the new nursery, we had two problems to solve: move the office, and move the shelves. We decided that the sunroom was the best place for both; it already had a bookshelf, and the computer had been in there before I moved in five years ago. In addition, it’s one of the only rooms that still had open wall space. Alas, no recent before pictures to share, unless I find where RM saved them on the computer. The construction is simple, and based on Elfa shelving: spines screwed in at the top, running the length of the unit to the floor, where another screw holds the spine in place. Fortunately, our apartment has good bones, with wood crown molding and solid wood baseboards, both strong bases for the books—and in this case, our computer monitor and tower. The wood spines are adjustable shelving spines screwed to 2×2 pine wood posts; the shelves themselves are mostly 3/4 inch plywood, either 8 or 12 inches deep. (A few of the shelves are white-lacquered pressed wood, leftover from a previous shelving project.) These shelves were constructed in the same way, but instead of posts that go floor to ceiling, they’re balanced atop the credenza ($25 from Goodwill). Bookends vary, as you can see: some are shelf dividers from The Container Store; some bookends we had lying around; and others are, say, a begonia, a TV diorama, or a giant glass head filled with rocks (Pier 1 Imports, $9.99. I still don’t know why they had five shelves of those heads, but I’m glad they did.).		The library
Closeup of bracket, post and spine.	Inexplicable glass head

The best part of the new shelves? No more stacks of books piled in corners or doubled up on shelves. We liked the units so much we even installed them in our bathroom. (That’s for a later blog.) All in all, here’s the damage we did. Aside from the shelf dividers, everything came from Cole Hardware. RM would like to remind our readers that they’re all “in-town” prices—Home Depot would’ve been cheaper, materials-wise, but not if he’d had to rent a car. Like with all of our projects, this one involved a great deal of schlepping, with special thanks to RocketMan’s brother, who was visiting during the construction. As a New Yorker, he knows from schlepping.

Because you read the whole blog, you get a prize. FISH!

Courtesy of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and The RocketCam.