Progress

      Over the weekend, despite not feeling very well, I managed to install the custom shelves in my bedroom.  And even grilled a couple of steaks in celebration!

     Darned near didn't get the shelves in.  Because they are very large -- 95" x 63" x 11" -- I designed them to come apart in five pieces: left side; right side with three 11"-wide shelves attached; the top two shelves, vertical divider and horizontal brace; and  two horizontal braces, one at just about desktop height and the other about 10" above the floor. All held together with rabbets, wood screws and, in one spot, a pair of small 90-degree brackets.

     Taking it apart was easy: I laid it face-down on four pieces of scrap wood to keep the front off the garage floor, removed the wood screws, and tapped it apart, stacking the pieces to one side.  I had to make clearance cuts for the baseboard at the back of the right side (and erred way on the side of caution), but that's easy with a small chairmaker's brace, a 7/8" auger bit and nice Japanese keyhole saws.  A little bit of sanding and some wax, and it was ready to bring indoors and sit awhile to get used to the colder, drier environment.

     Things began to go off the rails come assembly time.  There's (barely) not enough open floor space in my room to reverse the disassembly process.  Nope, the shelves had to be assembled in the hallway, on one side, with a lot of clamps to hold things together while the screws were put in.  I laid the heavy vertical (the one with three additional narrow shelves) on the floor and thought about it.

     The first problem: the screws for the full-width shelves go in from the outside -- which would be the inaccessible side laying on the floor.  Easy enough: a couple of 24-packs of a soft drink cans elevated it nicely to set the screws from underneath with a stubby driver.  I have never been more grateful for Tam's soft-drink habit!  A couple of long pipe clamps and short bar clamps got everything seated, aligned and held it while I drove the screws.

     That got the top two shelves in.  The desk-height brace (and the one nearer the floor) sit in 1/2"-deep rabbets along the back and are held with screws that go through the brace and into the vertical -- plenty strong enough when the shelves are all together, laying face down or standing up, but way too vulnerable sitting sideways and held at only one end, especially when I tried to fasten the other vertical in place on top.

     The answer was a handscrew, one of those big, old-fashioned wooden clamps with a couple of threaded handles. I held the brace in place, cranked the jaws of the handscrew tight just above where it fit into the upright, and used a short bar clamp to hold the brace to the vertical.  Another bar clamp from the front front of the vertical to the back of the brace squeezed it tight into the rabbet.  I tightened down the wood screws and left it clamped in place.

     The (temporarily) "top" vertical was a challenge.  The long pipe clamps were adequate to hold it steady while I lined everything up with short bar clamps and screwed the top shelves and middle brace in place.  That left the lower horizontal to be installed; it slotted right in, got clamped down, and fastened.

     Now I had a fully-assembled shelf sitting on two boxes of soft-drink cans and nearly filling the hallway!  I got the boxes out from under just as Tam showed up.

     "Wow, it really was cleverly designed to come apart and go back together!  You need a hand with that thing?" She looked skeptically towards my room.  "Is there going to be room to stand it up?"

     I told her, "Sure."  I was, in fact, not sure.  Especially if I wanted the TV to still have a screen afterward.

     We got the shelves slid into my room.  They were still on one side and 90 degrees away on two different axii from where I needed them.  Standing them was going to require a complicated 3-D rotation, with deflections to clear my bed, the high shelf above the room and closet doors, and the ceiling fan* in the center of the ceiling.  It was about all both of us could do, but we managed.  Barely. Once the shelves were right way up and near their final location, Tam looked at the narrow gap where I had the old desk moved out for clearance and the limited wall space the shelves were planned to fill.

     "Is this going to go in there okay?"

     "Guess we're gonna find out."

     In fact, it did, with a quarter-inch to spare.  The desk fit right into the space, clearing the shelves and the floor register that I'd worried might be slightly blocked.  Nope!  After dinner, I used a small wedge and a couple of little angle brackets to get the shelves firmly in place, and started loading them up.  No pictures yet; the shelves and the room-organizing they required is still very much a work in progress.

     But by gosh, they're in.  And they fit as planned.  Man, that's a nice feeling.
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* It came with the house.  I don't have much use for ceiling fans, especially on 1920s tube-and-knob wiring, but it's a big job to take one out.