Crappy Shelves

I apologize in advance for this post. I know you’ve waited patiently for a whole month for me to write something new and I’m telling you now, this post won’t feel like it was worth the wait. At all. This is the crappiest project I have done so far.  I totally forgive you if you want to just skip it.

I knew you wouldn’t skip it. That’s cool, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I wasn’t joking. This project sucks.

This post is (again!) about my office closet. Who knew there would be so much to say about a closet? Honestly, there isn’t. But I keep finding things anyway…

First I told you all about my fantastic bookshelves that I designed and built myself. (That’s actually a quality post worth reading.) Then I asked your opinion about which curtain I should use as a “door” while simultaneously telling you I couldn’t care less what it was. (That one was mildly amusing.) But now… well, this is a post about more shelves. How exciting. (No, it’s not.)

Not to make excuses, but really, there were a lot of factors working against me on this project. Factor 1: The walls where I put these shelves were all uneven. Factor 2: I don’t have a table saw, so my cuts were less than precise. Factor 3: The wall studs were not conveniently placed. Whatever. They’re shelves inside a freaking closet. Who cares?

My original plan was to build plain old regular shelves, but then I thought it would be nice to have some extra drawer space. IKEA has these cool drawers you can buy that are meant to be used with their KALLAX shelving unit as inserts. They’re built like modules. I bought two of them and built my shelves around them to fit.

Factor 4: These drawers suck.

Not only are they cheaply made (which I guess I can’t really complain about because they were, in fact, cheap), but I thought I was getting nice, deep drawers…

What a disappointment. They’re not even 3″ deep. Good for silverware. Bad for office junk storage.

I didn’t take any progress shots. Even if I was big on the tutorials (which you know I’m not), why would I ever want to document this project? It’s not like you need a how-to for ill-fitting, unstable shelf construction. I’m positive you could handle that all on your own without any help from me. I believe in you.

Maybe when I fill them up with crap they’ll look better. Hopefully they don’t fall down…

See? What did I tell you? This post was not worth the wait. I’m nothing if not honest.

I think my next post will have the Pointless Poll results. You probably don’t even remember the Pointless Poll, it was so long ago.

I barely remember the Pointless Poll, it was so long ago…

#lazygirl

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21 Comments

    • My Crappy House

      I’ll buy hilarious and marvelous, but amazing shelves? Now I just can’t trust your judgement at all…

  • Andrea

    Your drawers and shelves actually look pretty nice to me. Maybe your photography doesn’t show the bad part well enough!

    OK, so you could make bins that just fit the inside of the drawers, and make the sides tall, then sit them inside the drawers so the drawer contents stay inside. You could make them out of corrugated cardboard and then cover them in pretty paper or fabric.

    • My Crappy House

      Yep, I was thinking of extending the boxes with luan or thin mdf. The photos definitely look better than the real deal. I was thinking of covering the shelf tops in contact paper to hide the imperfections. I could use the same paper to cover my drawer extensions too. Good idea

  • julie

    With brilliant minds, alas a few loser projects can occur. learn from it and rebound with a fantastic project!! We need a few flops to keep us grounded!

    • My Crappy House

      This is true. It’s hard to be awesome all the time. Exhausting, really. This was bound to happen.

  • Pat Ritchie

    I loved the post, or may be seeing someone having as much trouble as I do on occasion. Whatever. Loved the drawer pics! Gave me a laugh in a boring day at work.

  • Jill

    Your closet drawers aren’t what I’d call crappy. Crappy is what I do, which is just throw stuff into my tiny, wretched closet that was built by the guy who built our house in 1950, who had clearly never built a house before, and was quite possibly drunk when he built it.

    • My Crappy House

      Gotta love drunken amateur builders… (not really) For me, these are crappy. But it’s all relative

  • Lynn

    I’m dying to know what that thing is underneath said crappy shelves. Also, can’t wait to see the results of the pointless poll.

    • My Crappy House

      That box contains all of my oil paints from when I was in school majoring in illustration. They’re probably not even good anymore! I should really check. That was a looooong time ago…

      I’m excited to share the Pointless Poll results! It’s going to be a fun post

  • Aferal

    Welp! I’m glad to hear from you. Even if you don’t like your shelves (they don’t seem crappy in the pics you posted) ,&I agree, “wtf, Ikea?” As a fellow frequent,”wtf, Ikea?”-er (erm), I feel ya’. I think we miss you when you stay away too long, so even a small, not -so-“crappy” post is welcomed. You make me laugh,& I’m certain I’m not alone. Looking forward to the pointless poll-results!
    Keep on keepin’ on!=^_^*=

    • My Crappy House

      Aww it’s nice to be missed! I will try to post more often. I’m pretty excited about the pointless poll results. I think it will be a spectacular post

  • Le

    I like the shelves too. Maybe your mad photography skills can’t help but make everything cruddy look better. If so, can you take some pictures of me? I need to look less cruddy in pictures. =)

    • My Crappy House

      lol there’s nothing cruddy about you. If you really want to test your theory, I should take pics of my brother… Oh, snap!

  • Jen Renda

    I think that project looks great for no table saw. BTW – Did you figure out the paint for the other room? You showed us swatches on a wall.

    • My Crappy House

      I’ve narrowed those 30 down to like 24… lol I’m still contemplating. I think I should do the floor in there first so I can install the trim and then paint. I plan to put tile in there. Something interesting, but TBD… Thanks for asking

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