Look at what I did this weekend!

Ok...well maybe it's not so impressive right now, but it's getting there! Ben was away the whole weekend on a camping trip and I spent my time in the dining room listening to the Princess Diaries movies on TV and building shelves!
I've been waiting to have shelves built in the dining room ever since we moved in. I had two carpenters come in to give me quotes on this project and two other smaller carpentry projects (in the kitchen and living room) and both quotes came out to around $11,000! Yikes! Well that was way more than I had in mind, so I thought...hmmmm...maybe I can do it myself! And like a true DYIer, I got to work as soon as I could (which meant after the wedding, and after the honeymoon, and after I got caught up on some of my backed up work in the studio because of the wedding and the honeymoon (now do you see why I wanted to hire a carpenter in the first place? lol).

Our house is full of huge windows, doors, and archways, which leaves little room left for walls. I hate blocking windows with furniture, and without furniture, where can I house my collections? Soooo, I thought it would be great to take some of the most wasted space in the house and turn it into an area of "extreme" use and therefore I decided to add wrap around shelves from floor to ceiling on one and a half walls in the dining room. The wall space I wanted to utilize was split many times by two huge windows and a door, resulting in tall narrow strips of wall. Almost no furniture would fit there and I thought I could do better than simply hanging some pictures. So, to work I went!
A spent the morning at the hardware store and lumber yard down the street and running around the house collecting tools (and a trip to my dad's farm where he has a plethora of tools that he so generously lets me borrow). And after some finagling, some minor redesigns and some practice, I got the hang of it and sort of figured out how to the get those dang shelves cut, installed and in place without taking all the old molding off (and painted too...but that was the easy part). I made the shelves adjustable because I know how helpful that can be and it turns out that getting the holes for the pegs to match up to each other was the hardest part. It's not perfect, but luckily it's not noticeable imperfect either, phew! And the shelves are actually more complete than they look, I just ran out of shelf pegs (I bought all that hardware store had), so most of the shelves are awaiting their pegs. The molding on top and bottom will wait until the rest of the unit is built.

Ok...that was the half of a wall...now it's time for the full wall! Stay tuned and wish me luck! :)

And also, I really wanted to thank all of those who snapped up one or more figures from the update on Friday. It was a major success and it makes me feel so good that many of you out there are just as quirky in taste as me! :)