Category: Blog

I Built a Shelf

Blog

Seen here, posed on the bench I built last week. With bonus black cat.

The design is a bit different because it’s made to fit *into* a space in my walk-in closet, amidst the built-in shelves already there (installed by a previous owner). The shelf is, therefore, 31 7/8 inches wide, 60 inches tall, and 11 3/4 inches deep. I only put backboard on a couple shelves because (a) where it’s going to be “installed” has almost no horizontal wiggle room, (b) I decided to use up some scraps that fit almost perfectly, and (c) I didn’t want to wrestle a full sheet of 1/4 inch plywood from where it’s currently ensconced.

I bought the supplies and started building this shelf back in February, but it suffered delays.

The first delay was the onset of gardening season. The second delay was working on a project with my son. The third delay was losing my job.

But now it is done.

-David

I Built a Bench

Blog, Garden

An outdoor bench, to be specific, for my backyard garden.

Last week I realized I had accumulated enough scrap and leftover pressure-treated (PT) lumber that I could build a simple bench. The scraps and leftovers were of varying ages and silvering, some going back to 2023, I think, when I built my garden shed. And they’ve just been accumulating in the backyard. Idle lumber is the devil’s tinderbox, maybe?

The original design was all 2x4s, but I had a left over 2×6 from … something? So I adapted.

I won’t build this design again. It’s one I found on the web after a bit of searching, and it looked OK. But now that I’ve built it, I don’t like how the back supports are put together. Also, the back is too short for me (6′ 2″) to sit comfortably for very long. Should I decide I need another bench for my garden, I’ll dig deeper. Or design my own.

Still, it was fun to spin up the miter saw and build something new, on an impulse.

-David