Wood Storage

As you may recall from our long ago post, we have a good deal of firewood (mainly Modesto Ash).  Previously, meaning for the last year and four months, this wood was piled up on the side of our house, covered with a ratty old plastic tarp.

Mrs. House decreed that this needed to change, and further, we are planning to put in more berry planters in the location where it is currently sitting (as well as some sprinkler plumbing).  You will also note that the place it is sitting is pretty low, so the rain puddles and gets the bottom stack of wood wet.  So a project was born!

Never one to do things the easy way, we enlisted my dad for some help, and built a wood cradle to store all the cut wood.  We used wood left over from the demolished old storage closets, and a new redwood 2x4 for the horizontals.  As is typical for our carpentry projects, this is way overbuilt, and could probably hold 10 times the wood it has space for.  Sorry that there are no WIP pictures, but really, there is not much to this.

Still covered by the same ratty old tarp, but much nicer looking!

In other house news, still slowly working on installing baseboard.

Feeling a little Shelfish

With the impending arrival of the addition to our family, we found it necessary to wind up our hobby room to create space for a nursery. As one of us (me) has an extraordinary amount of hobby material, this meant that we need to find some storage somewhere, something that could safely hold all the various materials and models. (mostly unbuilt models of course!)

Since I have an inordinate love of storing things in office boxes, we decided that a set of shelves designed to hold 15+ of these boxes would be ideal. Also, since we do few things by halves here at This Old Blog (should we finish a project at all of course), the shelves were built to be adjustable, hold far more weight than they would, and tied into the rafters and studs for extra support. We also planned to create a seat for changing shoes, and a space to store two large plastic tubs.

As always major construction was accomplished with the aid of my father, and minor work completed by me in the wee hours.

The shelves were built in a corner of the garage by the side door and the door to the house. This space was occupied at the time by a bizarre accumulation of closets built on closets, storing nothing but spiders a the time. Previously it appeared to be a broom, paint, and dust storage closet. This was ripped out, which was difficult, because like everything built by the previous owner in this house, it had about two nails per linear foot of board, sometimes more. All nails were three inches long or more, although the size varied from nail to nail. We ended up ripping the boards out, and removing the nails later when possible.

While we were doing all this, we also replaced the cardboard cladding of the garage corner in question, and drywalled, textured, and painted. Yes, I said cardboard. Some previous owner covered up the studs in the garage with fruit box cardboard. Some of that was subsequently covered with shelving material or drywall. A horrible mess. Removing all of that also exposed some minimal termite damage, which was photographed and scraped away.

After the drywall was installed, the surface textured, the supports tied into the frame of the garage, and the seat constructed, the shelf brackets were installed. Then shelves were cut to fit, supports added to the front edge of each to prevent bowing, the whole mess sanded and painted to match the garage walls.

Now, on with the pictures:

The previous closets on closets

What lies beneath


Drywall up

Putting shelves together

Pre painting and sanding with boxes to test placement

Final paint

Next time on this old blog: Fencing? Wiring? Nursery? Garden or trees? You will have to tune in to find out.