Monday, July 21, 2014

Oh, My Aching Knees!

     I have now completed the second set of bookshelves I'd cut and routed while on vacation. Another afternoon spent mostly crouched or kneeling over the shelves while I whittled, cut and sanded has done my knees no favors (most strikingly my "good" knee, which pops, cracks and catches in an alarmingly painful manner).

     They're sitting in one side in the living room now, adjusting to the much lower humidity, quite in the way (though not as in the way as they were in the garage -- even standing up, they featured in a conversation that included the phrase,  "I was barely able to get my car out and I don't know if I can get it back in again!" They had to move).  Having gotten them this far, I'm starting to wonder if there's enough clearance to get them around the corner to the office or stand them up once I get them there.  So it might be there's additional work in my future featuring a saw, dowel centers and drills, plus installing a crossbrace on the top section so it can become a kind of "removable hardtop."

     All this, and before I can even place it, I have to rearrange furniture in the office, empty and remove an existing set of shelves that date back to 1980 (and are slated for rebuilding and re-use elsewhere) and generally clear the decks.  It's likely to take every evening this week. I think I'd better check on that "clearance to stand them up" issue before proceeding.

     ...With that done, Step Two is to measure the wall space between the new shelves and the window frame, in order to build yet another set of shelves to fit there.  (Is there an end to my shelf-building?  Probably when I run out of walls to put them against.  I should've bought a bigger house!)

3 comments:

SJ said...

Congratulations on a task completed! Or partly-completed.

RE: knees.
I've seen tradesmen pack knee-pads to their jobs.

(The kind of tradesmen who work on cabinetry, plumbing, flooring, or other tasks that cause them to rest a lot of weight on their knees.)

Don't know if you do enough of that on-the-job to get your employer to source them or fund them.

My own knees would probably prefer them, even though I don't hear creaks/pops after a weekend of such work at my house.

rickn8or said...

SJ, I've become well acquainted with knee pads recently. Lowe's or Home Despot has them for gardening or other work you mentioned, with prices ranging from $10 on up.

Howzabout some photos Roberta, as I am shamelessly stealing your ideas.

jdunmyer said...

Heh: I had a garage built this past January, a 30' X 30' pole building with 10' sidewalls. After the concrete was finally poured, we wired the place and immediately began construction of shelves across the entire back wall. They're already about half full, and the junk all over the floor in my shop is hardly dented. Fortunately, with my short cars, we could actually build another row of shelves, with a 3' aisle between the 2 rows.