Bookcase

Howdy! Sorry for not posting for a few weeks. I have been busy with the children and the cold weather makes me sluggish and unmotivated to do anything. Fortunately, I did have enough motivation to build a bookcase from scratch from Ana White's website. She's incredible!  Someone saw my bookcase that I posted on my Facebook and commented over the phone to me that why didn't I just go to Ikea to buy one? Well, Ikea is far away from where we live, and whenever we go to Ikea, it ends up being a huge time and money waster. That place is dangerous. It has a layout that forces the shopper to go through the whole store before coming to the checkout area. You see so many cute things and boom! Your cart is filled to the brim when you only came for one thing.

Anyway back to the Bookcase. We have so many books but no where to store them! I went down to Home Depot one weekday and got the guy to cut sooo many wood cuts for me. I ended staying there for 1.5 hours! I was feeling a bit uncomfortable by the end of it because I knew it was a lot of wood to cut and the man said to me the next time I go back to the store, I must buy him a coffee.

I primed the MDF with 2 coats of primer and let it dry. Then I painted it white, another 2 coats of paint.

I then used my new Kreg Jig tool, we invested in it because Matt was going to build a closet space in the boys rooms'. The last time, we went the Elfa route, it cost us US$500 for a small space, and that was with a discount. This will cost us less than $100, as the bookcase did, it was $70 all up. I had the primer and paint and the tools on hand.

Here is a picture of the Kreg Jig, it helps you with wood joinery.

The wood below has been pocket screwed by me, and was moved to the basement from the garage because I knew it would be extremely heavy to carry down the stairs once it was built together.

 Here it is, completed. It is very strong and very heavy. I learnt that you have to be very accurate with the cuts because, like quilting, every other part is dependent on how accurate you are with its measurements or the next piece will go all wonky. My dividers were cut by the Home Depot man as I said before, and they were over by 1/8th of an inch. I thought, "Who cares? It is only 1/8th" WRONG! After I had nailed the bottom dividers on, I noticed that the bottom shelves were bowed. I realised it was due to the measurements not being accurate enough. It was a lot of work for me to try to pull out the whole shelf and start again so I left it but fixed up the dividers for the other two remaining shelves.

Now that it is complete, I have been unpacking the children's books. Yay! They have been sitting in boxes for 18 months since we moved to the USA and it is nice to be able to re-introduce them to the boys again! I am going to build another one - for my books this time! :)