Oh, What Beautiful Shelves You Have!

This is part 2 of the Laundry Shelving Unit Saga. To read part 1 (planning and building), go here.

On Monday I left you in suspense... I showed you how we were building a shelving unit to go over my laundry machines, and then I left you in the dark as to what they actually looked like. Hopefully you'll forgive me seeing as it was a short wait for once, right?

Let me tell you, it was quite a glorious moment when we installed my laundry shelves! I'd been waiting some time for them, and they were finally here! Check them out:



They are in the corner of my kitchen, so they are a little tricky to photograph as there is not much light coming into my kitchen.

Let me run you through the specifics I mentioned I wanted in the first post.

1. They needed to be free standing. Check! This was for a couple of reasons. One, we have no idea what these walls are made of but they are incredibly hard to screw anything into, they are made of plaster or something that crumbles really easily.

Two, this is a rental after all, so the less screws/holes in the walls, the better!

Here's a view from when you enter the kitchen.



Solid pieces of plywood support the 3 shelves of the unit, each 24" wide (which was 1/2 of the width of a sheet of plywood). At first my dad had planned to just have 4 narrow "legs", 2 on each side, with an empty space in between. I much rather like this idea (why he had to go buy one more plywood sheet that I mentioned in the last post).

I'll be able to decorate the sides of the unit (on the inside) with small frames and such for little notes, calendars, etc. But all in due time.

He did secure the unit to the wall with a few screws, just to prevent it from swaying. There's a few on the side, screwed in the wall next to the window, and a few on the back wall.



Just to be on the safe side, my dad screwed them in at an angle (as in not straight into the wall) so that IF it were to want to fall, it would be WAY harder to pull out the screws when they are like this.

2. We wanted the shelves to be made of wood and stained. Check!

These are made of pine plywood (which was the cheapest at 23$ a sheet, even cheaper than MDF) and have a really nice grain to it. We stained with Minwax English Chestnut. I really love contrast, and as you can see that wall of my kitchen is beige, so I knew I wanted a dark stain. Walnut was too dark, and this one was a little lighter and with tints of red.



3. (Because of 2.) We needed to built some sort of reinforcement to the plywood to give it more strength.

So we built a frame on the underside of each shelf. This shot shows pretty well the frames. And I already talked about the difficulty the shape of the bottom shelf gave us while constructing its frame in the last post.



4. The top shelf had to be longer than the others and have a rod to hang clothes to dry. Check! My favorite feature!



It's not necessarily the prettiest rod, it's just a normal closet rod, but it's very functional!

Here's a close-up of how my dad hung it. He just got L brackets (not entirely sure that's how they are called...), attached it to the closet rod where you would normally screw it into place with nuts and bolts, and screwed it to the underside of the top shelf.



I know it's a bit of an eye sore, but I'm ready to look past it (for the moment until I figure out how to hide it!) because I know it will be so darn useful!! If you've got any ideas what I could do, please don't hesitate to share!!

5. I needed to still be able to open the laundry machine lid, but didn't want a small 8" shelf.

BTW, the 2 lower shelves are 12", the top one is 28".

Of course I didn't just want a plain square cutout of the shelf, that would be too boring! So I got my dad to do the indent at an angle and round off the corners ;) I'm a girl that knows what she wants!! Thanks dad for indulging me :)



Bonus Point! 6. Provide LOTS of extra storage!

In my head, I did not have this much storage potential on top of the unit. I'm usually pretty good at picturing stuff in my head, but I don't think I realized just how tall and big it would be. Either that or how low the ceiling is compared to the height of the unit.



When I planned on building these shelves way back when we moved in, I started looking for baskets to use in this space.

One day I was at Michael's on a weekend trip to see my parents' (as I always do), it was shortly after Christmas and they were having a sale on baskets. I found this set of 3 baskets on super sale!!



It was the only set discounted at that price (even among identical ones...). They were 80% off!! Yeah, crazy right?! So instead of 45$, I paid 9$ for the biggest basket. I was super stoked to have found them. The middle one was 6$ (the bottom is convexed so it wobbles quite a lot, wish I had checked that out in the store first...)and the small 5$.

So I walked out of Michael's with a big smile on my face, 100$ worth of basket in my arms but with a 20$ hole in my wallet :)

When we were building the shelves, I took a moment to measure my baskets to make sure we were building the shelves far enough apart to account for the baskets. Now, here's the headdesk moment. For some reason, I didn't measure the handles in the height of the basket...

So this happened when I tried to put the biggest one on the shelves:



I felt real smart there... haha! Doesn't help that there's also the support frame that removes 2" to the in between space. At least the 2 other ones fit.



My only saving grace is that I don't think the 3 baskets would look very good all on the bottom shelf anyway. Nor would there be space for the 2 biggest ones side by side on the left of the indent, and only the smallest is small enough to fit where the indent is. I could saw off the handles, too, if I really wanted to put the big basket there.

So the big one goes on the very top of the unit. Just picture it up there... Forgot to take a picture of that.



I didn't really start moving stuff into the unit until 2 weeks after it was installed. See, it took us much longer to build and finish than we thought, and we finished sealing everything about an hour before leaving (my parents' house) to go install it at my apartment, so I still had to sand the rough surface left by the sealer. And I didn't have time until 2 weeks later...

Part 3 is now up: click over to see how I've organized my shelves!
And if you'd like to see it in action, check out this post. I can easily fit 30 hangers on there, if there's more which has happened then it takes longer to dry is all.
Thanks for reading, until next time!



Psst: If you enjoyed this project, be sure to visit my Projects page for more! Or check out the popular posts (in the right sidebar----->).




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More Shelves Please!

There is very little storage in my 1 bedroom apartment and I'm constantly rearranging the closets we do have for better optimization. You can see the one big(gest) closet we have in this post, but I have yet to make a post all about my closets and their organization (which I do plan on doing).

So I asked my dad if he'd help me build a shelving unit to go above my laundry machines in the kitchen. I thought there was a lot of dead space there and shelves would really help.


Planning

So here is the space we are working with. My laundry machines are in a corner of my kitchen right next to the fridge and stove.



We thought it would be best if we had the unit as free standing as possible, because we are not sure what the walls of these buildings are made of (seriously, you try to screw something in there and can pull it out because the plaster or whatever just crumbles).

I also wanted to incorporate a rod to hang my clothes for drying. I never put wet clothes in the dryer (they shrink), and we do have a drying rack, but it's flimsy, even with the chopstick reinforcement!

So that meant 3 shelves, with the top one extending a bit more so that the clothes hung off it would not touch the shorter shelves below nor the machines. And it had to be no more than 6' tall for me to be able to hang stuff without needing a bench.

So with that, we drew up some plans. Ok, my dad made some plans, let's not kid ourselves, he is the master mind, I just give orders and directions ;)


I know this is not the best looking plan, but it's what my dad drew up, according to my measurements (which I was afraid I didn't take correctly, but it fit perfectly in the end!!).

They were gonna be built out of plywood, because it is cheap and pretty enough to just be stained. We love us some natural wood :) But because of that, we needed to think well about reinforcement as plywood is not very strong by itself, especially on a 61" stretch. So we incorporated a support frame that would go underneath the shelves (that's the 2" written on the plan).

He also drew up a cut sheet, to best maximize the plywood we would get.



With that we were off to Home Depot to get our loot. We came back with 2 sheets of pine plywood (23$ a sheet), but my dad had to go get more (because of a design flaw). We picked up some stain as well, and a few other things for an other project ;)

And that was as far as we got that weekend, ha!

Building the Unit

Couple of weekends later I was back home again, and we managed to get a days work done. And then again 2 weekends after that we spent 1 day and 1/2. We did 3 projects all at once, one of which was the Kitchen Mug Shelf I shared last month, and the other is for an other day. Here is how it went down.

Some widths were cut with the miter saw with the plywood balanced on a big box that was in the garage (new BBQ if you're curious). A long level was used to keep a straight line.



Once the narrow pieces (frame reinforcement pieces) were cut on the table saw (no pictures were taken because it was a 2 man job) the radial saw was used to cut them to the right length.



My dad got an action shot of me... Got my work clothes on!



A little tip for this part, if you are cutting pieces that are all the same length, secure a piece of wood in place so that you only need to put it against that piece and not measure every single piece (picture explains it better than me). Good time saver.



Yay. All pieces are cut!



I don't like square edges, so I got my dad to make a rounder edge on all the sides that would show. Well, the bit we used was more oval than round, because the thickness of the plywood wouldn't allow us to use the round router bit.



It was really hard to photograph the round edge, I hope you can see it!!



Then we gave a good sanding to all the pieces before pre-assembly. Fun fact, this was my first time using a palm sander. It's not as easy or as fun as it looks. My hands are small so I can't get a really good grip on the handle, and it vibrates so much that after 5 minutes of sanding my hand had swollen so much that I couldn't take off my ring anymore!



The pre-assembly consisted on making the underside frame of all the shelves. Basically 4 sides all around the edges to provide extra support. So we screwed all 4 sides together to make the frame, and then screwed it to the shelf itself.



We also filled the screw holes with wood filler and sanded.



The bottom shelf I wanted right above the laundry machines (with a 1 inch grace), which meant we needed to cut out a small part where the washing machine lid opens. This also caused a LOT of trouble while making the frame.

As you can see, we had to cut smaller pieces to go around the opening all zig-zag like... And then because the edges were rounded, it could only be assembled one way so the frame indent would be in line with the shelf indent (following me?).



Naturally, we screwed up and made the frame on the wrong side... Double and triple check people! Even the 2 of us made the mistake. In the end we had the shelf all framed up...



Anyway, the other 2 shelves were a breeze to frame after that one!! And that's as far as we assembled it at my parents'.

The last steps were to stain and seal the wood. I chose Minwax English Chestnut (13$) because it was a dark stain but more red than walnut.



We hadn't planned on sealing, but after manipulating the stained wood and staining our hands, it became very evident that it needed to be sealed. I have no idea what kind of sealer we used, my dad just took it from his stash; it was in a non labelled plain can....



We did do a practice assembly in the garage before we headed to my apartment (2 hours away). I thought I had taken pictures while we assembled in the garage, but I guess I didn't transfer them from my mom's camera or didn't actually take them.

Anyway, next time I will show you what they look like installed in my apartment!! I will have to make a 3rd post about how I organized the shelves, too. Stay tuned...Check out part 2 here!





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Gardening: 2 Months later

Two months ago, I started my first ever garden. I had no clue what I was doing or what I was getting myself into, but I’ve learned a lot already and enjoy the time spent watering, weeding and just plain admiring!

Last week I showed you how I started my seeds in pots and how they grew after 3 weeks, when I decided to transplant them into the garden. Now it’s time to see how they have done since then! This is about 1 month after transplanting.

I have 6 types of plant this year, which were chosen on what was available at the Dollarama at the time. I really didn’t want to spend a lot on the first year not knowing what I was doing.



When Seedlings Become Plants

Most of my garden is composed of cucumbers. They are the plants that did the best from seedling and I didn’t have the heart to kill them off. They’ve almost run over my yellow beans, but not quite. I did not expect them to overrun everything like that.


This picture was taken a little over a week after the previous ones, so the cucumber had time to grow up on the fence a bit more

There has been a LOT of flowers for the last 2-3 weeks. Let's take a peak under the leaves, shall we? So many beautiful flowers! (I know only the male flowers give cukes, but still...)



Unfortunately, I've lost a couple of plants since these picture were taken. I've got cucumber beetles :( I didn't know they were bad bugs at first, so I didn't kill them off from the start. Now I'm killing them every chance I get!

On the left, below, you can see a leaf that's been eaten by the cucumber beetles, and on the right, you see that dead/sad looking leaf? It hasn't really been eaten by the beetles, but it is dying because of a plant virus coming from the stomach of the beetles. I really don't know if they will make it through. I cut some leaves every 2 days about.



Nonetheless, the cucumbers are growing!! I just hope my plants survive until they fully mature.



My yellow beans are in the middle of the cucumbers. (Well not anymore, I had to remove the 2 plants on the other side of the yellow beans).



I got some flowers a few weeks ago and actually got some yellow beans after!! I am sooo excited about that, my first vegetable!



Only thing is I only have 2 plants, so I didn't have a very much.



I still got to make a small sidedish out of them, so I’m still happy. They accompanied my fish meal last week, which I shared earlier on Facebook. (If you want to see my Facebook updates live, like the Color Me Domestic page!)


Don't mind the burnt garlic and pine nuts, please, I'm not the best cook, but I am trying!! And learning! Must remove the pan from the heat as soon as garlic becomes slightly golden ;)

I know now that they are very easy to grow, that I have to start seedlings every couple of weeks if I want to eat some regularly, and I need maybe 6 plants, or more, to have a good portion at a time.


My carrots did not transplant well, as I mentioned previously. Why I thought starting them as seeds in individual pots is beyond me right now. You can laugh at me, I know I am! I’ve just got a tuff there, which {was} hidden by some cucumber leaves. We’ll see later how they do, how they grow in the soil I have which is laden with rocks.



Next is my lettuces. I got 3 of them. I thought they would grow bigger, but my grand-ma told me I should harvest them already. I’ve now harvested some by cutting the leaves (that were more open and falling) an inch or so past the stem part. It was enough for one salad. I’m excited to see how well they will regrow, and how fast. I’m not too sure yet how many I need to grow for next year because of that. To be continued...


These look incredibly sad compared to what I have now. But at the time, I was super excited!

My peppers are quite sad looking, as in so tiny still! I know beyond a doubt that I will not get anything from them this year, but I’m still keeping them to see how they grow. I will have to start the seedlings WAY early, like March or even Febuary, inside, if I’m to get anything.



I got 1 plant that is bigger amongst them (front left), and that one I transplanted before the others (when it was just an inch tall, if you remember from last post), at the same time as the other vegetables. I was afraid they were too small at that time to transplant, but I still wanted to test. Seem like they weren’t too small and it grew so much better!

Next year I will also just keep 1 seedling per pot, and get bigger pots, to give them the best chance to grow big and strong before putting them in the garden.

Lastly, I also have some broccolis, about 7 of them (out of 9) survived thus far. Some are bigger some are smaller. But most grew crooked, I don’t understand why. As in they grew horizontally a bit before shooting upwards. They seem to be growing stronger stems as time goes by, but no flowers and nothing that resembles a broccoli head has surfaced between the leaves. I read they like soft soil, maybe that’s my problem? I’ve got to do more research on broccolis...



Oh, and I think a squirrel got to this one, I hope it was not the only one that was actually gonna make a broccoli!



Watering

Living in an apartment building, an old one at that, we do not have an outdoor hose. I have to take my watering can inside to my bathroom and fill it up in the bathtub. At least we live on the first floor and we don’t have to climb too many stairs. I need to fill it up 4-5 times to water everything, including my flowers.

And I just HAD to get the orange watering can :) (FYI orange is my trademark, apart from being short)



Sometimes we do leave for the weekend. We have very generous neighbours who water our garden if it's not raining, on top of their own. But I always worry and try to water extra before going.

I want to finish by showing you my flower garden, I don’t want to do an other post just for that, so here goes.



I got some marigolds and some lobelias, yellow and purple, from the store. I planted them in the small corner garden in front of our balcony. I didn’t want to plant my garden there for a couple of reasons. One, there’s about 2-3 hours of direct sunlight there. Two, there’s about 8 inches of soil there, which I didn’t think it would be enough.

I don’t have much, and it looks a little empty, especially since the squirrels have a fun time snapping off the stems and leaving them to die. I started some marigolds from seeds, too, and have replaced some of the bought marigolds that were not doing so well, but I don’t know when they will start blooming (they are a bit lighter in color).



Next year I want to do a nice arrangement here. Maybe start a few flowers indoors earlier (if I have the space), or else buy some more. Definitely will need a gardening budget of some sort for next year with all my plans, hein?!

I’ve got a couple of stock flowers that are in my vegetable garden. Again, dunno when they will flower.



There’s 4 Morning Glories up on the fence to the side. They’ve grow up to the top of the fence (5’) and are still trying to climb! They are wrapping around each other because it's the only thing they are finding to climb, it's kinda funny. I hope to get flowers by the end of summer! Only 1 month left :( Maybe more with the wonderful weather we've been having this year (knock on wood, hope I didn't jynx us!)



Lastly I got a couple of Lantana plants, bought, planted in this big pot. This is one of my favorite flowers, but unfortunately, my plant it not flowering too well. They are suppose to be yellow, orange, pink flowers all in a bunch (like the other that are blooming), but they last a day or 2 like that and quickly turn dark pink, so I dunno what’s wrong with them, but I’m kinda bummed. And right now they have completely stopped producing flowers, even though I am sure they have enough water. I'm kinda really sad :(



Alright, that concludes my garden tour, I’d love it if you linked up your garden post if you have one, or several!

I’ll come back in a month’s time and give probably the final rundown on how my garden grew, and what I want to do for next year. I already have bigger plans for next year, and can’t wait to give this gardening another go!

FYI, I am in zone 5a. (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)





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