Regular readers of the blog (are there any??) know that I was itching to pick up a miter saw a few weeks ago and get to work on something — anything — besides painting or staining. Well I finally did get my hands on one. And now that it’s firmly bolted to a work table in the basement (please, saw, don’t eat me!), I’m able to tackle overly-ambitious projects like this one:

Why build half of a bookcase where a whole one could fit?

I set out to remedy the situation. Not knowing, of course, that the answer was “a whole one doesn’t fit.” But we’ll get to that in a bit.

From what I could tell, the bookcase was made of three Masonite panels that formed the back and sides, with the shelves attached using screws driven from the outside of the Masonite inward. Then the whole unit was hoisted up and attached to the wall. A few added strips of molding later and it looked as though it had been built right alongside the house. I thought this was a clever construction technique since it hid all the hardware, and I set out to replicate it.

Several hours later, I ended up with a matching lower unit including two shelves attached to their sides and back panels… sitting in the middle of my living room floor. Because when assembled, it couldn’t swing past the stove and the radiator cover to get into the alcove where it belonged. Blast. This is why I only had half of a bookcase!

I quit in favor of having a few glasses of wine and a good night’s sleep. The following day, I came up with the following work-around, which is crazy and long and you can just skip to the pictures below if you’re not interested. Wait, here’s one now!

Anyway, I first removed the back panel of my new unit and swung that one piece into position so I could mount it to the wall. I then removed the top shelf from my now-backless construction, pressed the Masonite side panels together in the gap where the shelf had been, and squeezed them and the lower shelf into place. Bending the right-most panel down and to the left, I managed to get a screwdriver behind it and re-attached it to that side of the top shelf. I was stuck when it came to the other side, though. I raised it into place and drilled some screws directly into the wall underneath it, so the shelf rested on the screws. Then I carved channels into the underside of the shelf to hide the screw heads.

I might not choose to sit on the shelf, mind you, but it’s more than enough support for my books.

Ta-da!

And as an added bonus, I now have a place to house some of my artwork. Here’s an old sculpture of a bull that I made right after graduating college:

I’ve been thinking of posting the bull as the first piece for sale in my Etsy shop. I will get back to making art instead of bookcases, someday. In fact, I think this week might be the week.