No Creepy Elves On These Shelves

They are DONE!!!  Woot woot!  And it was NO SMALL FEAT either.  My word.

I went out on Sunday for what I thought would be a simple trip to pick up some wood at Lowes.  I was hell bent on starting on the shelves for the laundry room.

{the awfulness I was working with hence the reason for this post}

What I thought would be a quick call to my Daddy-O about what kind of wood I should get, turned into a 45 minute phone conversation on way too complicated of a process.  Love ya Dad!  But I was trying to keep it easy peasy. And his idea was not easy or peasy. But we worked it out.  I finally made it to Lowes only to be told that their saw was out of order.  Fuck. Me. Seriously?  I bought the wood brackets in my cart- although I wasn't in love with them but they were the only options there and headed over to the hood to Home Depot.



While Lowes wasn't able to cut the boards for me I will say this- I had no less than 6 people ask me if I needed assistance.  I literally stood in the center aisle between the front and back of Home Depot in plain sight for 15 minutes without a single person around.  After walking up and down aisle after aisle I went back to the lumber area and there STILL wasn't a single person there.  What I did next would have been embarrassing for anyone else but not this twit here.  At the top of my lungs I screamed in the store "CAN I GET SOME ASSISTANCE IN LUMBER PLEASE!!!!!"  I mean, at least I asked nicely.  But you know how loud I am in just my inside voice? Just imagine my outside voice.  I was super annoyed but really needed the lumber.  If I was just there for something simple I would have left.  It was bullshit.

Finally, someone came over and asked if I was the one needing help.  I said- "No- that girl that screamed left and went that way.  But I need some wood cut, can you do that for me?"  HAH.  I didn't want him thinking I was unstable or anything.  Once my wood was cut I headed home- only to realize that I needed screws. Dammit.  So into Menards I went.  But the good news is that while I was there I found different wood brackets that were much more to my liking.  Score!  And a trip that should have taken 30 minutes took me 3 damn hours.  Ugh.  And I've still yet to return the original brackets from Lowes.

I immediately laid the boards out in my garage to stain them.

 {naked pine board}

{dark walnut stain- Rooooaaaaaarrrrr}

How gorgeous are they?  Sexy.  While they were drying, I cleaned off the wire shelf in the laundry room and called it a day.  Mama needed to lay down with a bowl of ice cream after that stressful trip.  

Monday after work I got working on taking the wire shelf down.  I spent so much time trying to get it off of the wall that I almost thought about just cutting the entire wall of out and re-drywalling- as it might have been easier.  Those shelves suck.  If you could have seen me standing on my washer and dryer YANKING on this shelf cursing like a trucker, it would have been a sight.  Those damn hooks that anchor the shelf to the wall did NOT want to come out.  Fuckers.  After about 30 minutes and zero patience left I finally had them off, but was left with like 10 holes in the wall each one about the size of a dime.  

So out came the Spackle   Once that was done and dry I touched up the walls with left over paint and called it a night. 

It's almost like the shelf was never even there!!!  On Wednesday I had the first board up.  I used two L shape metal brackets to hold them since it was going to be so low to the washer/dryer that you wouldn't be able to see the wood brackets so why spend the money on them?  You can see them in the picture above.  And the picture below is that first shelf in place.  Hells yeah!

  

And for those of you Dad who doubt my shelf installing skills- it's level.  See:

{in your face!}

And this one shelf is where is sat until I got home on Friday.  Again, I'm living the dream people.  Am I out at a bar on a Friday night having a great time?  Nope.  I'm building shelves.  I know. Be jealous.  I did however, stain the brackets while I was waiting for the paint to dry on the walls.  So they went from this:

To this:

{note to self: time to paint the garage}

So after I fed my belly I got to working on getting the remaining two shelves up.  There was lots of pre-measuring and illustrations drawn to scale and OCD measuring again.  When I was finally good with plan, I got out the drill and put some holes in the wall!!  And a few short minutes later I had another shelf up!

Please don't point out the difference between the brackets and the wall on either side.  Why couldn't there have been studs in the same place on either side?  OMG it will probably drive me nuts but I'm training myself to forget it. So not another word!  Now that shelf number 2 was up I couldn't wait for the 3rd one.  

Are you ready for it?  Brace yourselves for a wall of sexiness.  

I warned you, didn't I?  Gorgeous!  I'm in love with brown wood.  That's what she said.  I just need to screw the wood down into the brackets and I'm done.  So excited!  Now I need to find the perfect baskets and pretty organizers to put up there to hide all my junk.  I also need to take down that wood key chain and purse holder, sand it and stain it the same dark walnut color.  That'll be next week.  For now I will just admire my new shelves.  Ahhhhhhhhhh.  

One more before and after.  

LOVE IT!  The mixture of rustic with the wood and glam with the chandelier- is exactly what I was looking for.  So how about you?  Built anything new lately?  Or are you too busy getting ready for the holidays?  I'm super excited about going home.  Literally counting down the days.  I'm in need of a much deserved break.  I bought some new stretchy pants today at the outlets that I can't WAIT to be a sloth in.  I may or may not already be wearing them.