A very productive day.

Wow. What a day.
After feeling pretty grim last night, I slept in a little this morning, getting up around 9:30 to Cat making breakfast. The Zachster had slept in with me, but somewhere during the morning had gotten up and left. The joys of the barrier means I got a decent night’s sleep, and really didn’t notice Zach getting up and leaving the room.
Rick and Gabe spent the night, so I assumed that Zach was off playing with Gabe.
Breakfast was very yummy, and helped me get started. After a quick shower, I got started on the project of the day…

The king-sized futon in my room has had a problem that’s been annoying me pretty much since we rearranged the room. Because of the (clever?) placement of a radiator, the head of the bed has been about 18″ away from the wall. We’ve ‘solved’ this problem by folding up a futon mattress into that space, but that means there’s always this amorphous mass behind the head of the bed. What I really wanted was a place to put books, a reading lamp, stuff like that.
I had in mind a wooden shelf of some arrangement, that could also be a backrest for the bed. Over the last couple months I’ve designed it in my head what it should look like, and during the week i picked up the lumber I’d need to finally build it.
Today I hauled out all the hardware and tools, and got to work. I took all the measurements, and checked it against the lumber I had – I was going to be short :(. I cut some of the pieces I needed, and determined I’d need some more 1×4 pine, plus some 1×12 boards for the ‘backrest’ part. The other fun bit was it had started raining. With all the debris in our garage, I needed to work outside. Bummer! A good time to go get some more parts.
Off to Home Depot! A quick hour later I was back, and even better, the rain had stopped, and the sun was coming out! Excellent!

I had the top plywood cut to length already, and had cut the 6 2×4’s I was going to use for legs. With Ricks help, I framed in the top of the unit, set the legs in place, and started the supports around it. We used wood screws to hold the top surface down to the frame, and used 1/4″ x 3 1/2″ carriage bolts to attach the legs to the framing.
After that, I needed to cut the 1×12’s and place them on the front of the shelves, and bolt them into place. The whole assembly took about 5 hours from beginning to end. The last bit was using the belt sander on the top surface and the edges. I decided not to seal and put the final finish on. It was getting late and cold, and I was getting pretty tired.

Rick and I carried the shelves up to my room, and they slipped into place around the radiator *snick!* just like magic! All the measurements were dead on, and the thing fitted perfectly. It was -rock- solid, and I put the bed back together around it. I set up a pair of reading lights, running the wires back behind the shelves to the now-captive outlet there.
Once everything was back together, I just sat back and looked. It looks _GREAT!_. Unfortunately, since my camera was stolen, I can’t take a good picture. Here’s a rough shot using one of my webcams (that’s Zach hamming it up there), but you get the idea.
*bounce!*
I’m -TIRED-. But it’s a good “I did some good, constructive stuff today” tired. All the tools are put away and things are mostly cleaned up, so I’m pretty much done with this project until I decide to refinish the surface of the shelves, which’ll probably be later in the summer.
NB – During the time I was writing this mail, Zach has nodded off on the bed pretty much in the position in that picture. What a guy.