Painting & Building Shelves

I built my first shelf unit! These Besta units from Ikea only come in certain heights, so in some places I had to order a 48" unit that would get a 24" unit on top. This is one of the top pieces. Unfortunately, this is one of the units I can't put into a permanent spot yet because that's where Rick needs to work to finish hooking up the lights. When the delivery men came, they just stacked up all the boxes, and since I have to get everything built anyway, I just started with the top box.


Rick came home and informed me that's he's got lots of work this week, so he wouldn't be able to do any work in the basement. About an hour later he came down and started taping and preparing to paint. Lucky me! He finished the work he had to get done and decided to get some paint on the walls.

It was nice having him down there with me while I was building shelves, but he's so used to having a helper work with him, it's easy for him to ask me to do something for him every 20 minutes or so--"can you tape that for me?" "Oh! Wipe up that drip!" "rinse that paint brush out" "lay some paper down here" "do you have a knife?" "maybe you can reach this" "where'd I put my glasses?" and so on, and so on. Of course, I had to jump for him! My mama didn't raise a fool ... I want this work done!

Rick also kept reminding me how much he HATES to paint. He'd also say things like "ya know, when this can is empty, I'm done here." Luckily, we had enough in the first can to completely finish the first coat.

This area here next to the stairs is where I'm going to set up my little refreshment area. The wall is slanted because the stairs continue up into the rest of the house, so I'm going to install a couple of cabinets with a counter top and a small refrigerator that I purchased when another LSS went out of business.

This is one of the tallest units. I purchased four of them to go along this wall. I had 3" clearance to the drop ceiling, and Rick was amazed that we stood it upright without hitting the drop ceiling! Ha! He thought, for sure, I wasted all that money on shelves that wouldn't fit! I love it when I'm right!

I got two of these built, and three of the short units. Still got lots more to build, plus I need to drive to Ikea to pick up the last unit that was on backorder. Time to get to work!