The Virtue of Shelfishness

Finally done with shelves! Here's how it all went down:

We've got one full support system up and hanging now, and my dad is narrowing in on the center of the beam for another.

All three supports are mounted to the ceiling here. I was very pleased with how they went up. Everything feels just crazy solid.

First shelf section is up! We're still figuring out the best order in which to do everything, but we're making it all happen.

Second section up, and attached. We put the steel plate near the front edge to help keep the pieces attached to each other without affecting the total depth of the shelf or anything. It seems to have worked quite well for us.

Close up of the plate. it's 5" x 8" and about 1/16" thick. We got a bunch of them for the bathroom upstairs, and they were also perfect for this purpose. The boards are secured to the rear support, so they're not going anywhere, this just helps make sure they stay together in the vertical plane. It also helps spread the load out across the support strap, since there's a seam in the wood right there.

 All shelves are up and in place. Woot!

Still very pleased with how low-profile the shelves are. Going with this support system allowed me to get 3 shelves above head height instead of just two, which is what I would've been looking at with the other support systems I had in mind. It's also the most versatile, allowing me to move things around underneath as needed, so I can change my mind about what goes where and all.

Woot! We didn't completely screw everything up to the point where bins wouldn't actually fit! These are just test bins. Sample bins, really. But they are the first of many more bins that will find their way up onto these shelves. Probably this week, we'll go get a bunch from the basement and get them up here, to free up more space downstairs.

So there you have it. Project completed. Well, mostly completed. We have maybe one or two minor things to do, just to call it all the way done. But they're minor and sort of cosmetic, more than anything. So I'm calling it done, for all intents and purposes. By the time you read this, it will likely be done for reals.

Thanks for reading!