I’m pretty familiar with building different things for my home. I have done this as long as I have lived alone and had to build different storage things for my college dorm. I’ve gotten so many things over the years from places like Ikea, Target, and Amazon that require to be put together and I feel like I have gotten pretty good at doing that. Sometimes, it does require a second person, but usually I can figure out a way to do it on my own. Sometimes that means I’m holding things up in weird ways, but I’m always really proud of myself when I complete a project and I have something new in my place.
I have had to build some random things for my new place, but I haven’t had to do a lot since so much was done in the remodel. I used to have to build things for storage or organization because my old place lacked it, but the new place has been much easier to set up. But that doesn’t mean it was perfect. And we didn’t want to ask the contractor to build things that I knew I could get at a box store and could likely put together myself. And that’s what I’ve been doing most weekends.
I’ve been searching online for the perfect things that I wanted to get, and I waited until the floors were done before I ordered things. And now, they have been coming in.
The first thing that I built was actually 2 different pieces. I wanted to turn the closet in my office/guest room into a bit of a pantry or storage area. At my old house, I had the utility room that I used for this idea. I would mainly store things like extra cleaning supplies, toiletries, and my tools. And I didn’t have a great place already set up in the new place to do that, so I wanted to build some shelving. There were a few ideas of what to build, but I settled on some nicer-looking storage shelves. I didn’t like the idea of just wire shelves, and I found a strong shelving system that looks a lot more finished and complete than a lot of what I found online. I ordered 2 units because I wanted to fill half of the closet.
They arrived about a week apart, so I build one before the other. And despite some of the reviews online saying they were hard to put together, they were pretty simple. I finished the first one in about 20 minutes and the second one only took a bit longer because I wanted to make sure I got the shelves to match. But I think they look exactly what I was looking for now that they are in place.
I still need to organize the shelves a bit better, but this got a lot of stuff out of boxes that I’ve had on the floor and that makes me very happy. And when my parents are visiting me this fall, my dad will help me make these a bit safer by attaching them to the wall so they won’t fall over if there is an earthquake.
And this past weekend, I worked on a new bookcase for my living room. I will be using this as a way to display different things I have and not really for books, but I wanted something to help to fill out my living room space. Originally, I was going to get a new entertainment center, but the ones I was liking were very expensive and would be something I would need to take time to save for. So I got this bookcase knowing that it might be moved to a different spot eventually, but it would be a good thing to have for now.
This build ended up taking much longer. It didn’t come with instructions, so I had to find them online to figure it out. And I don’t know how I did this, but I actually built it incorrectly. It’s fine the way that it is, but each side was flipped. So where the shorter section is now is where the longer one should be. I think it’s fine that it’s this way, but I think it’s pretty funny that I managed to do that. And once it was completed, I got it next to my tv so I could see how it looks. I still need to move the tv a bit further over (and get a new tv), but I think my living room looks a lot better!
I want to say that I don’t think I have any more things I need to build for a while. I will eventually have the bookcase bed for my office/guest room that my dad and I might try to put together, but that might also be something that needs to be done by a professional. I’m not going to worry about that for now since I won’t be ordering it for at least a few months. But even though I think now that I have no other projects to build, I know that something will probably come up and I’ll be doing another project soon enough.
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