I Heart Shelving!

I have not been working on the blog for a while because I crashed my bike in April and hurt my shoulder. Sitting in front of the computer was fine, typing for long periods of time was  somewhat  painful.

So after six weeks, my shoulder is about 95% back to normal. Suffice to say, the bike did not survive. But I got a new bike so all is well.

For those who know me, they know I have a strange obsession with shelving. A lot of people have shelves in their residences, but most people don’t talk about their shelving projects and show pictures of their shelves like a proud parent shows pictures of their newborn.

In just over two years, I have installed 33 shelves in my 500 square foot apartment. Two are in the storage closet and the remaining are in the rest of the apartment. The bulk of the shelves (20) are located in the living/dining room.

I entered a video contest at the website Get Rich Slowly. The video is about the money saving awesomeness of shelving. I won “honourable mention” with my submission. My motivation for entering the contest was not to win a prize but to the spread the gospel about the awesomeness of shelving.

I grew up in a house of shelving so I have a natural inclination to shelve. Shelving is awesome because it allows you to organize and display stuff without taking up a lot of space. The other bonus of shelving is that you can make a shelf out of pretty much anything.

The question I am asked the most often is about drilling dozens of holes into the walls of rental apartments.

I’ve never had a problem with the holes because I patch and repaint before moving out. It’s not hard and basically if you find one of the building staff’s patching jobs, just make sure you do a better job and nobody will bother you. Just do a lot of sanding and you will be fine.

Of course if you look closely at the patch job, you will see flaws, but for the most part, people don’t stand 10 inches away from their walls looking for flaws.

If are new to patching drywall, there are many links online to find tips and you can always practice by drilling holes in the walls of the closet and filling the holes.

The nice thing about shelving is that you can make shelves from anything. Of the 33 shelves, only four are store bought and that’s because they are made of glass.

Since we live in a terribly wasteful society, it’s really easy to get materials. The slightest flaw in a bookcase or entertainment unit and out to the garbage it goes!  A few cuts with a saw and you are ready to go. If you don’t have a saw, Home Depot will cut your stuff for a few bucks.

Things I have made shelves out of:

– broken wooden IKEA bed headboard

– front of dresser drawers. Best part, did not have to cut!

– side of the dresser drawers.

– an old stereo stand disassembled made four different shelves.

– a CD case, on it’s side.

– a discarded IKEA table top. The nice kid at Home Depot cut it into 6 shelves for free. Of course I did buy $22 worth of hardware to attach said shelves so it worked out for all of us.

Tip! Painting the brackets the same colour as the wall, will help camouflage the hardware. Or you can leave it as is and that will create a sort of cool industrial look.

The absolutely best thing about shelving is that your stuff is displayed which means it’s easy to find and you can appreciate it so much better than having it stuffed in a plastic tote box in the back of the closet.