{"id":221,"date":"2026-05-11T13:16:01","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T12:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/?p=221"},"modified":"2026-05-11T13:16:02","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T12:16:02","slug":"urban-infill-shelves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/?p=221","title":{"rendered":"Urban Infill Shelves"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It’s too late for me to be writing this now and I want to go to bed so I will talk about it later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Day Later\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s a little space between the kitchen bench and the bookcase upstairs that is currently full of random stuff – phone chargers, cables, the technological dags dangling off the rear end of our modern connected lives. It’s all very tacky and unsightly. In response, Mum asked me to make a shelf to go in there – or rather, she wondered if we could get a shelf and I said that I’d build it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a pretty well practised technique for making furniture but I didn’t want to go that route because on my bookcase build I found it a bit of a hard slog. Instead of building a box and adding shelves to it, I decided to build a frame shelf, with the shelves themselves joining the legs of the shelf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sketched up the design in pencil, after taking the measurements and drove over to Bunnings to get the timber. And once I had done that I drove all the way back because I hadn’t bought enough. I did select what I thought were the best of the 42 x 42 mm lengths of pine but on closer inspection at home I discovered that the claim of DAR was a lie. The lengths were dressed on 3 sides and the fourth side was rough sawn, so rough that my little GMC table saw with its decent blade can make a way better finish to a cut. I was not particularly happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I decided I could just about live with the defect and proceeded to mark out the timber. My theory was to cut trenches in the vertical posts that the shelves could slot into and then be screwed in place to create the structure. I could try using a hammer and chisel but I usually get better results by sawing out the trenches on the table saw; I only had to make sure my marking was accurate and my sawing was right on the lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the marking was done, using a blade, I then began the process of drilling pilot holes for the screws, sawing out the waste timber and finishing off with drilling pockets for the screw heads. I marked out the timber so that the rough surface would be facing the wall but I wasn’t consistent and one of the verticals has the rough surface facing the side. Never mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cutting the shelves to size was the most problematic part of the procedure because Bunnings didn’t have the 1200 x 400 panels that I wanted, so I had to buy 1200 x 600 panels. That meant I couldn’t use the fence on the table saw but had to remember how to set up the cut using a separate fence clamped onto the work piece. After getting my head around the procedure I began my first cut, only to find the blade drifting away from my mark. No matter what I did I couldn’t get it back on track. I’d marked it out so that the saw was cutting into the waste timber so that wasn’t an issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I noticed that the saw was trending back towards my line at the end of the cut. What I had done was select a piece of timber to use as the fence that had a bow in it and that forced the blade off course. Annoying but not the end of the world. For the second cut I used a length of aluminium and got a better result, though still not perfect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having ripped the shelving to the right depth, I then proceeded to mark up and cut the shelves to length. This didn’t offer me too much difficulty as I used a piece of aluminium angle to set the position of the cut. I trimmed up the shelves with the erroneous depth and the machining was complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I still had plenty of time so I started to assemble the shelves. After laying the verticals on the work table I slotted the shelves into place and discovered that I hadn’t screwed up, well apart from the long vertical at the front that I’d marked upside down. I installed it upside down and only had to deal with the rough end that I hadn’t done anything with because it was supposed to be at the bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting with the front I began drilling and screwing the shelves into place, taking care to align the edge of the shelf with the outer surface of the vertical post. There were two cuts that were a bit tight so I widened them slightly to avoid having bits snap off. After tea I finished assembly and then gave it a good sand down. The rough surfaces came back to reasonably acceptable, even if it’s immediately obvious that they weren’t actually surfaced by the manufacturer. I decided to give all the edges a bit of a smoothing so the shelves are a bit more refined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notice I never said anything about glue. Yeah, arguably glue would have been a good idea but it’s going to see light service and not be moved around. Now that I’ve started to finish the project, disassembling it and adding glue might be a chore for someone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next day I broke out the spray gun and gave it a coat of estapol. That was interesting. The instructions say “do this” for vertical surfaces and “do that” for horizontal surfaces, but it has vertical and horizontal surfaces, so ??? After leaving it for 6 hours I sanded it down and gave it another coat of estapol. The spray gun does a pretty good job but I know I over sprayed one patch. It might show up once the estapol has dried but we will see. It will be under the benchtop anyway so not particularly visible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was going to leave it at that but in the morning it looked as if one of the legs had been missed so I gave it another light sanding and put on a good coat of spray. I left it all day and when we came back from Peaceful Bay I took it upstairs and that’s that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new construction technique seems to have worked out pretty well with few surprises. It’s maybe not as rugged as my usual method but it’s less involved. I’m curious about why the shelf moves more in the direction perpendicular to the grain in the shelves (as I’ve made it, front to back). I’m not sure whether it’s because of the joints or flexing in the timber. It seems quite rigid in the direction parallel to the grain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a bunch of other things I was writing here yesterday but the power went off and now I can’t remember it so never mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s too late for me to be writing this now and I want to go to bed so I will talk about it later. One Day Later\u2026 There’s a little space between the kitchen bench and the bookcase upstairs that is currently full of random stuff – phone chargers, cables, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223,"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions\/223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}