The continued slipping away of my manly braai room into the all-encompassing clutches of Chantelle’s Cookies & Cakes venture went a step further this weekend, as I finally got Project Shelving off the ground and installed what I’ll refer to as Phase 1 shelving for now.
And following the acquisition of yet another medium duty mixer (a nifty Russell Hobbs mixer from Game) for the kitchen, the only real missing piece of the Cookies and Cakes puzzle is now the second oven, something we’ve already identified but just need a little time to save up for – and of course give us time to get a little bit of electrical work done…
Anyway, back to the shelving. With Chantelle not available I needed to factor Jess into my calculations and so came up with the length of 140 centimeters, the longest length of a board that my car could load taking into account both Jessica and I occupying front seats. I decided to use Builders Warehouse in Somerset West as my supplier of choice, mainly because I could get everything under one roof, including getting the boards cut, and after a fairly hassle free process, I walked out with brackets, two full length chipboard shelves, two pieces of off-cuts (which I would later decide to turn into shelves as well) and a variety of fasteners and drill bits.
After a bit of discussion with Chantelle we selected the area next to the indoor braai as the ideal hanging spot and after a bit of manual effort, my shelves were up and ready for loading. As per usual Dad’s tripod and auto-levelling laser came in super useful in getting everything lined up nicely and I have to admit, I’m pretty pleased with the outcome. The only change I think that I’ll still make is to introduce a third bracket down the middle, just to provide extra support and allow us to load heavier packaging and ingredients on the shelves without causing too much warping.
As an added bonus, I noticed that the off-cuts that I had received slotted in perfectly next to the linen cupboard currently serving as Chantelle’s main smaller ingredients holding space, and so after another visit to Builders Warehouse (where I was forced to purchase a different bracketing system thanks to them being sold out of the one I had just bought the previous day), I set up a smaller single purpose stack of shelves, perfect for carrying the weight of all Chantelle’s flour and sugar. (The new brackets are rated to hold up to 55 kilograms).
So a job well done and one step further along the path of never using my indoor braai ever again. Sigh.
I must just note though, shelving is certainly not cheap. With the wood costing about R350 and the metal brackets all together weighing in with another R500-R600, not to mention all the other little extras, the whole project still ended up costing me just short of a R1,000 – certainly not pocket change then. Still, a small price to pay for Chantelle’s rapidly expanding empire! :)