The great shelf project

[gazerwolf]

When we moved in there was this great big wooden shelf in the basement... reached to the ceiling, with 8 2 foot deep shelves, and about 7 or 8 feet long.

I put stuff on it for a while but the boys (mainly Ben) kept pulling whatever was on the shelves off.  Apparently it was much better for climbing than for storage.

Now this shelf was made of very rough wood, looked like it was all kinds of different wood, of different lengths and thicknesses.

I decided recently that I was going to take it down and get rid of it.

I started this morning around 7:30 after I got back from taking the boys to the bus stop.  I started just using a mini-sledge, but starsongky suggested I find a pry bar.

So I found an old tire iron that I had found left in my yard (I couldn't find my pry bar) and went back to work.

Around 10:30 or so I pulled the last board apart.

Now I had to figure out what to do with the wood.

I got some of the better pieces and cut them to the length of our basement stairs...they were open stairs (with no riser) and the boys are always dropping something through the openings, plus Beast may fall through sometime...and that would hurt him pretty bad. (not to mention that open stairs freak starsongky just a bit.)

I spent about an hour putting in scraps as risers....they don't look real pretty, but they function right.

Then I had to figure out what to do with the leftover wood...A LOT of leftover wood.

Ain't enough space anywhere in the house except maybe in one of the attic spaces for that much wood so I decided to put it in the back yard behind the patio (I had put some busted up concrete there earlier.)

I kept a few pieces that looked reasonable (and that I could find space to store in the house)

I then cleaned up the utility side of the basement a bit ...moved some stuff around, moved some stuff under the stairs (I put a bunch of the stuff I already had under the stairs further under the stairs now that I could stack things higher there without tripping people)

I am now a bit sore...the wood was heavy and I don't do that kind of manual labor often.

I imagine I will have  trouble moving in a few hours unless I get up and move some soon.