When Shelving Falls On You....

Dust yourself off and fix DIY mistakes.

So, the people who lived in our house before us were definitely the DIY kinda people. Which is great. That's what we are aspiring to be (slowly learning as we go!). However, back in 1985 when they (probably just "he") did all of these projects, apparently there wasn't a concern for proper installation or issues of weight bearing. And apparently wall anchors didn't exist either.

All of our cabinets (garage, kitchen, etc) have that not-quite-perfect look of a DIY job. The garage was set up clearly as a wood workshop (way more pegboard, benches, shelves, etc than we know what to do with), and we think he utilized the heck outta that thing - making all of the "surfaces" in the house himself. Closet shelves are also included.

The first shelf that fell on me was in the guest bedroom - let's just say that a 14 foot piece of wood was involved and millions of shards of broken glass. That was a fun day.

Not a month later, I had to dodge another falling shelf, this one in the laundry room. It held drying clothes, towels, sheets, and some laundry supplies. Perhaps it was overloaded, but I think the fact that the screw was just put into plain drywall had something to do with it. Luckily no glass was involved this time.

This event forced us to move forward with the plans we had about redoing the laundry room. It's a big laundry room, but like most other spaces in our house, it was not designed for efficient use of that space. And the ugly, now not as much of a fire hazard water heater is stuck in there too. I wish I had taken a picture before - as there was a giant white cabinet, island type thing in there, making it very cramped (excuse to not do the laundry??). This is the before pic of sorts - but after the shelf fell and after we moved the cabinet out.

So we put up a new shelf for hanging clothes on the other wall (with brackets and wall anchors, etc - who would have thought??) and decided to use the other wall as a pantry of sorts. We only had one narrow and inefficient cabinet as a pantry before, and that wasn't really working out. (By the way, only 3 of our 22 - yes, 22 - cabinets in the kitchen are tall enough to hold regular drinking glasses upright. He was a woodworker, but not one with much foresight!).

So instead of opting for the multiple shelving units we were discussing, we went the lazy route and bought this chrome baby. Easy installation and the freedom of mobility - can't go wrong! And I love the fact that you can see everything - something we didn't have in the previous pantry. Of course, that will be not so great when Roxy decides she wants to nab the grits.

So now we have a more functioning space, with plenty of room for me to move around as I go about my laundering. Now I'm just waiting for the next one to fall on my head.