Posted June 17th, 2008 by Some Random Nerd

I don't really know why, but much as I love power tools, I've always got the fear that when I'm drilling a hole into a wall, I'm going to go straight through to the room next door and through some wiring/a priceless heirloom hanging on a wall/somebody's head…

Still, I think I got past the fear when I put some new shelves up in the living room. Admittedly, there were a couple more extra holes in the wall than were really needed, thanks to some sort of cavity I wasn't expecting to find (that ate a rawlplug.) And a few lessons learned on the way; don't use a mechanical pencil to draw lines on a wall, because it might scratch a line in the paint that can't be rubbed out. And be careful when using some sort of giant cheese grater to plane down pieces of wood, because if you're not careful you might get a pathetic but painful wound if you accidentally grate your thumb..

Planed thumb

Ouch.

But I'm happy with the end result; every shelf holds all it's books without any creaking, slipping or splintering, and even passes the spirit level test.

Shelves

The only problem now is that they kind of make the bookcase on the other side of the room look out of place, so I'm going to have to go through the whole cutting/staining/planing/drilling/screwing exercise all over again...

Our Library

Next time I might wear gloves.

But I always have about 5 or 6 books that I want to take precedence; the books that I'm reading (usually 2 at a time), the books that I want to read as soon as I've cleared the ones I'm reading at the moment, and the books I'll dip into, having realised that for one reason or another, I'm not going to actually read the book through from start to finish— either because I'm not quite clever enough to tackle it (which is currently where Marshall McLuhan's "Understanding Media" is sitting) or because it''s just better off tackled in small doses, which is a slot currently taken up by Kevin Smith's "My Boring-Ass Life" (which is essentially a blog that's been reprinted in book form, but feels less repetitive if taken in smaller chunks.)

So I was quite pleased to be able to set those books aside from the rest of our library with their own spot.

Magic Bookshelf

Magic...