With the super-duper help of 0verdrive and the moral support (and woman's eye) of clevermanka, I finally have the foundation for our 140 linear book-feet of shelves in our living room. I also cut all the shelving to size and purchased all the remaining pieces needed to finish.

It's going to be a way-cool shelving unit... well, not exactly "unit": I should say that one entire wall of our living room will be bookshelves, and I'm talking about a 12-foot-tall and 16-foot-long wall here. Rear of the shelves is supported by 1x2s screwed into studs (lemme tell you how fun it is finding studs behind the drywall of a house where monkeys seemed to have done the framing...), fronts are to be joined by 1/2-round strips which add support, and half the weight is carried by thin stainless-steel aircraft cables attached to anchors in the studs over the shelves. There'll even be a shorter (the roofline angles starting at the 8' point) shelf at the top for Tatsuko to climb onto (via a cat-ramp) and walk through the little window to the upstairs.

Kij has a theory that any project time-estimate needs to be run through the following formula: Double it and add 30. Seems to be true. Things like measuring and re-measuring, then coming up with work-arounds when you discover just how uneven your walls are, these things consumed more than half the time. If it weren't for 0verdrive's help, I suspect I'd be building these shelves in my graying years, or setting fire to them. But, at this point, I think it'll only take one more weekend. Yay!

I had been hoping to surprise Kij with completed shelves when she got home, but I'd have to take a day or two off work to do so. Oh, well, seeing progress will probably be a nice homecoming, too.

Then the window seat....

Chris