Basic Woodworking

As part of our mad scramble to get some of the rooms of the house together before Kate arrives, I've agreed to have a go at some basic wood-working projects. The first one is a monster shelf unit for what will be the kid's bedroom. The room has a funny little corner where a bumpout for the back of a fireplace meets the closet. This space has always been dead space in the room and Holly had the great idea of building shelves into it so that it could be used for something.

So this morning I armed myself with my newly purchased table-saw and a ton of advice from my boss and friend (an avid wood-worker, and also named Paul as a cool person should be :-) and I built an 8ft tall bookshelf unit for the corner out of two 4' x 8' sheets of MDF plus 8 precut 16" x 48" MDF shelves.

I must have had some serious beginner's luck working in my favor, since I am thrilled with the way they turned out. The build was not too complex - since the unit is going to be built in to the room I didn't have to worry about visible screws on the sides. The hardest part has been dealing with the weight - all told, it probably weighs around 200 pounds.

Tonight we're hoping to conscript a couple of our neighbors to help me carry the unit inside and slide it into the corner. Once it is anchored there, I will add a sheet of MDF on the visible side to hide the screws and have it flush to the wall (hiding the weird edge from the fireplace bumpout). Then all that will be left to do will be trimming out the face edges with some 1" x 2" poplar to give it a more finished look. And painting of course.

More pictures to come one the unit is inside.