reclaimed doug fir shelving part III: let us bolt the carcass to the walls

No action photos of hauling these things into the house, but my good mate Chad and his daughter Clara Lin showed up this morning for a bit of tom-foolery getting these assemblies into the room. Chad took one end, me the other, and Clara (who is 7) helped call out obstacles in the way ("step! watch the branches! Watch the door!") she was awesome as I was backing in and you know, we didn't bump a single corner with these 106" long carcasses.

afterward, we stole away for some of of the best Mexican food in the East Bay and fixed up to a few burritos and quesadillas in the back yard. Then Chad and Clara left for her swim lessons.

I began the final attachment of the shelves to the walls along the top. It began with scribing the middle shelf tier into the walls using blue tape and a striking knife to get the lines defined. worked OK. The walls are not plumb and fall away from the shelves, but that will be where trim molding details will help. more on that later.

I fabbed up some tabs which would join the top of the shelf to the doubletop plate of the room. There's just about an inch of gap anticipated between the ceiling, and the installed shelving carcasses on the leveling frames. This allows a drill with a 12" extension barely enough space to drive in the screws attaching the thing to the wall. Manual testing felt sturdy. time will tell!

Due to the uneven geometry of the walls, I scribed the shelving into the wall and got it all positioned as I wanted before taking a few measurements for the tab thickness, which was surely to be some odd taper that only marking the thicknesses out insitu would reveal.

I left a little note for me to forget about in the floor leveling frame. I hope it makes someone smile some day

things came out pretty level, so this has been a better-than-expected day!

reclaimed doug fir shelving part II: glueup, sawtooth shelving, drawers, LED lighting flashtest

woodworking is definitely work. Once all prereqs were met, i had no choice but to glue the carcasses together. Clamp extension "cleats" were on order as I had nothing that would reach across the 57" wide section. they seemed to come out square enough, though.

The middle upright slides into the left side carcass with two housed dados on the ends and a housed bridle joint in the middle. But this goes in *after* the glueup, so I used a long straight-ish stick to make sure all these pieces were in alignment. Even though the diagonal measured pretty close, it took a little "english" to get things lined up in the middle.

It was a fairly intense morning.

closeup of the wedged thru-tenons of the middle tier. these should really help solidify things i hope.

the shelves were high enough to clamp to the trestle of my garage so that they didn't tip over, and I could continue with more detailed work

sawtooth shelving brackets were on order

made an army of little shelf support sticks

The shelves were edge banded vg fir ply. I really made a mess of some of the veneer until I learned to control my scraper plane. The edge banding grain was squirrelly, despite being fir, so i didn't use my block plane.

Practice getting the LED tap lighting orientation correct. It will be on the inside face of the trim molding that will be on the vertical members of the shelf. Big expectations about this working out, more later.

I doubt I'll ever do a curved drawer front like this again, but i did it this way because I had miscalculated the overhang required by the lower vertical trim molding and where it would interface with the drawer slides. So instead of an abrupt "L" cut into the molding, I chose a curve edge, meeting a flat spot like so. What a bitch to fit, however. Probably a pattern router could make quick work of this but I was using paper/mdf templates and hand tools.

i'm posting this photo for my reference, mostly. but the way I fit the trim to the drawer fronts was to slide some MDF under the drawer front, clamp it in place, and then cut the curve of the reveal with a knife. I then transferred this to the moulding sticks to get close.

The gap is not great but these drawer fronts took all of last weekend.

My dad flew down to CA to spend time in LA with my sis and then up to Oakland to hang out with sarah and me. He helped me get everything in a supine position for final finishing before dragging into the house for install. he had a very important contribution to the design which I hadn't thought through: how to get the over door shelving installed. It takes a guy who's put satellites into orbit (literally) to figure out how to tie the bow and put a capstone on this shooting match. more on that later.

jeeze, i hope they fit into the house!