3 months in the making

A while back I decided that Meredith's shoe storage was lacking. We had tons of boxes, and no easy way to see all of her shoes together. So I decided to build some custom shelves to fit the space we have in our strangely shaped walk-in closet. I bought the wood in about February, and then got really sick. Getting sick had one major effect on this project: it nearly extinguished it. A lot of times when I decide to do a project, I have to go through a design phase (yes, I designed this myself), and then when I figure out my bill of materials, I go for it. Well, this time, by the time my sinuses cleared, the fire had died. I would look at my pile of wood, and my stomach would hurt. When would I do my project?

Well, Meredith is visiting her folks this week, so I decided that now was the time. I had made the baby steps (which seemed like large ones) to cut the wood and stain the appropriate pieces before this week, and Meredith, in her desperation for a normal closet/bedroom (we had taken the old shelves down, so shoes were all over the place), had primed the painted pieces for me.

So I set out to work...I painted the pieces, and then I figured out how I would attach everything together. Here's the first stage of the assembly:

So if it isn't obvious, this thing is big. This is only half of the shelving. Next, I put together the other half, and then attached the bottom and top. Here it is in stage two of assembly:

As you can see, we're starting to get there. Lastly, I moved the rack into the closet, screwed on the legs, and loaded it up. Here's the finished product, shoes and all:

Well, there you have it. Three months (or probably more...maybe five or so) of work culminated. I'd say it was fun, but it was a lot of work. The fun part was solving the problem, which explains a lot about why I'm an engineer I guess.