How to Install a Shelf

I, Jonathan, would like to take a quick moment to recognize my second post. I have never gotten around to posting but now I have an exciting news story to post. I put up shelves in the laundry room.

It all started out with a problem. I had a very big problem. My clothes shelf was downstairs in my bedroom. This made it very inconvenient for me to do many tasks. Mom was always getting after me to put my clothes away. I never wanted to for two very good reasons. One, I did not want to have to go all the way downstairs to put my clothes away. At my laziness level that is an incredibly difficult task to complete. The other issue was that my closet down stairs only had a hanger bar. Putting shirts and pants on hangers is also very hard for me to do. I must have lacked the practice growing up. There were also a few other minor problems. Due to the fact that I hated putting my clothes away, the laundry room was filled with baskets of Billy's and my clothes, just waiting to be put away. Another one was that if there was company at our house and my clothes were put away, I would have to walk through the kitchen, downstairs, through the basement and into my room half naked with only underwear on. This could eventually become an embarrassing thing to do. Also, Mom did not like the way it was arranged in there at all. It was time for change.

After reviewing these problems, I decided what I wanted was a place to store clothes upstairs, within my walking capabilities, and to have shelves instead of hangers. This would make putting clothes away very fun because I would not have to walk very far, and I could just take the pile of folded clothes and put them on the shelf. More importantly, it would also make it so Mom could easily put my clothes away. I drew up the laundry room area we wanted to change, and told Mom to look for shelves and cabinets and draw what she wanted. She hunted down the shelves at Lowe's and found what she wanted. She drew up what it would look like and gave me a cost estimate. I proposed this cost estimate to Dad. He thought my idea was great, but I should wait. Finally he gave me the go ahead. I was ready to start!

For the first half week I did nothing except look at it and think of how great putting my clothes away would be. I did not have time to start on it, because I had to prepare Little League fields every day, lift on some days, go to baseball practices and games, and sleep. I simply did not have time. One day, though, I found I was ready for baseball and still had 45 minutes until I had to leave. I took out the electric drill and started ripping everything up. Well actually it was more like I took out each screw one by one of the original cabinet and counter. In that 45 minutes I was able to take out the cabinet. Justin helped a little. He really only helped carry the old cabinet and counter downstairs though. Mom was very excited and took about 15 pictures of the first day.

I would have worn a shirt if I had known Mom was taking pictures.

Here is what it looked like without the cabinet.

After that she said, "Why not take out the counter now too?" At that time I had only 10 minutes till I left and thought probably not. But I was just like, "Why not try?" I really am a positive guy, aren't I? Well I ended up discovering it would not come out and left for my game with a bag a Doritos left over from Billy's graduation party. After the game, I came home and discovered some magnificent news. Mom had found out the counter top would not come out because it was somehow attached to the adjacent cabinets, which you can see on the right in the pictures above. While I was gone, Mom busted into the cabinets and completely unattached the counter. I could finally take it out!

Justin and I had a difficult time getting the counter out of the laundry room. With some scratched wall and chipped wood we finally managed to get it out.

Here is another picture mom took after the counter was removed.

We took it out and it is now downstairs doing nothing. Now the hard part was to come. The cleaning. It was very messy back in the area we had removed stuff from. I let Mom do all of this stuff. I simply could not tolerate the weird looking things back there. One of the odder things was a big brown stain under where the filing cabinet used to be. I just stayed away from that area until Mom had finished. Finally it was clean. In other news, Mom and Dad went shopping with the boys and came home with a completely different cabinet than what was planned. Mom just was like, "Well we decided to switch things a little." Really though, it was completely different than the original plan. 

After cleaning, there were unpainted spots and screw holes on the wall. Mom was disgusted. She decided a paint job would be perfect. Yet another thing to add into the plan that was not there already. She put the tape up and put the primer on. I painted it the color she chose and was ready to start installing the shelves that night. I did a great job on the paint by the way. I am very sorry because Mom's excitement must have dropped and she did not take any more pictures after the one above until the whole project was done. In more news, Mom found a better new shelving unit than the one her and Dad had bought and completely changed the project again. I actually am pretty glad though because it was ten times easier.

So that night Dad and I installed the top bar that would support the bracket holders that would be vertical which would support the brackets which would support the shelves which would support my clothes. After much confusion as to where the studs were, we finally got it up. There was only one extra drilled hole after that night. We looked over our job we did and said in unison, "We did a good job."

Early the next morning I started to install the bracket holders which would support the brackets which would support the shelves which would support my clothes. Mom woke me up at 10:30, much to my dismay and stated that she would like the shelves up by today. I went to work installing the bracket holders. It was pretty easy. I just did what Dad said to do, put three screws in each bracket holder and make sure they are level. I did a decent job with only a few mistakes. Two of those mistakes were because of confusion on where the studs were. I just put and extra screw in those bracket holders. The other mistake was more major. On one of the bracket holders, I never checked to make sure it was level and I'm sure you can figure out what happened because of that. Mom saw it and was like, "Is that one bracket holder level?" I looked at her and just looked at the bracket and back at her and just kind of smiled. I went to work at fixing it. Ten minutes later, it was fixed. Mom was out shopping so I just tried to install the shelves by myself. Big mistake! I got them all in, but it was extremely hard to do. After they were in, I stepped back and thought of how much easier it would be to put clothes away. 

I left for a baseball game, which resulted in a loss, and found clothes on the shelf. I was so happy to see it in use. We tried to take some professionally looking pictures of us enjoying it but I think that it would look better if I did not wear an old looking Arizona Diamondbacks shirt that we got when I was in kindergarten.

Billy is all smiles as he puts his sweat shirts away.

Justin and I enjoy putting our clothes on the shelves also. You can also notice the new paint job in this one.

Billy selects a tie from the belt and tie rack that we got to install with the shelves.

This is just a picture that Stephanie made me pose for.

So this is the result of what happens if you want to not do as much work. As you probably noticed, Mom and Dad did a lot to help with this project. Justin and Jesse also carried old cabinets and trim very well also. Now I can get clothes on without having to walk through the entire house after a shower and I don't have to hang my clothes up. Better yet, Mom can just put my clothes away for me very conveniently! I am happily elated and exhilarated.