The shelving that I erected last time around was proving to be not quite enough for Chantelle’s growing business, meaning that it was time to initiate the Project Shelving: Phase 2 initiative – in other words, time for more shelves… a lot more shelves.
Like a true professional I tackled the task by first whipping out my notepad, pen, calculator and measuring tape, setting about making notes and diagrams of what I needed done. Armed with this information I missioned off to Builder’s Warehouse in Somerset West, where I was promptly told I had completely miscalculated the size of the board – which I then realised I had. Oops. Nevertheless, after playing around on their board cutting software, I managed to squeeze out six decent sized melamine chipboard shelves, with a couple of smaller ones thrown in for good measure, the cutting and material cost of which was only about R400, not too bad at all.
However, having done this last time around I knew the real price of the exercise lies in the railings and brackets – and rightfully so, they rang in at about R1,300! Because of the changes to my initial plans (basically I ended up getting a lot more shelves than originally bargained for), I spent a couple of hours in Builder’s Warehouse recalculating the amount of fasteners, railings sizes and brackets, but eventually I managed to get everything together and joined the super lengthy queue waiting to be served on what turned out to be a particularly busy Saturday afternoon for Builder’s Warehouse.
Back home I set about emptying the braai room, and then carefully took apart my previous shelving attempt, basically replacing it with a much longer set of rails which were more conveniently spaces and now holds five shelves, with the bottom shelf being a nice big work surface positioned right next to the oven for easy use.
Then I moved the old brackets across the room to above the work table, giving Chantelle an extra three shelves, the top most being a super large shelf, perfect for packaging material.
Finally, I slotted in the smaller shelves onto the existing corner shelf increasing it’s count to four, thereby completing Chantelle’s new look workspace/braai room!
I did the first set of five shelves and the small shelves on Saturday afternoon, and then completed the rest of the shelving on Sunday morning, and just because I could (in other words, my drill was already out), I then finished up by fixing a flat wall mount bracket in the office (R75), perfect for holding my monitor at the required height while I stand and work!
All in all, I have to say, I’m pretty pleased with how everything came out, especially if you consider that this was my first time putting everything up without the aid of a laser level!
