At Last

Finally, finally, after weeks and weeks of delays, my office shelves are up.

After last week’s post about the slope a couple of family and friends reached out to me with suggestions.

Can you believe that my grandma drew that up? She is one technically savvy lady. And obviously much better at spatial reasoning than I am.

My friend Derek linked to this image on facebook. More proof that other people are smarter than me when it comes to this sort of thing.

After pondering for a few days, though, I decided that I was just too  dang lazy to do anything to further improve upon the shelves. I was tired of trying. I’m still kind of mad about the brackets and rather disappointed in the company’s response, but that’s life I suppose. Bee tee dubs, if you’re in the market for pegboard brackets, don’t buy these ones from Robert Ham. They were defective right out of the box and when I politely asked for a return all I got were a few emails suggesting user error (How much weight are you putting on these brackets? What type of pegboard are you using?) and then…nothing. No more emails, no instructions for return. And never an apology. But that’s spilled milk. I’m moving on.

So my shelves slope a little, and I’m okay with it. But one thing I noticed when I put the boards up to test them before was that the layout was all wrong.

I didn’t like how that top shelf was stuck up at the very tip-top of the pegboard. I decided that I wanted equal spacing above and below each shelf. So while I was busy slapping two coats of white semi-gloss on the boards I had Nick move the brackets around in various configurations so I could decide which I liked best. He’s my go-to helper for any task that involves math.

Both of the four-shelf configurations felt a little crowded to me. Plus, I didn’t like that with rows of three brackets across the middle bracket would always be off-center (due to the wood support running vertically behind the center of the pegboard). So I decided to ditch one of my shelves for the greater good and go with three shelves supported by four brackets each. Can’t go wrong with extra support.

I’m really happy with the look. I think it’s much more balanced than the original four-shelf layout and I’m totally digging the symmetry of four brackets spaced across. I’m waiting another day for the paint to fully cure before loading them up with stuff but let me just tell you-I can. not. wait. I’ve got visions of vintage shop inventory and piles of fabric stacked attractively and efficiently. My messy, crowded, drawer-less desk will have some relief in the form of accessible storage on that bottom shelf. And I can finally stop using this project as an excuse for not tackling the major clutter problem in this room. It’s gonna be a life-changer, I can feel it.

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