Foray Into Carpentry

I don't recall if I have talked about wanting to build something...but I've been wanting to! We really needed shelves in our garage, and even small simple plastic ones are expensive at the store. I've been looking online for ideas/pictures and never really saw a plan that I felt was right. What did I do? Drew up my own! Here is one of the finished shelves:

I basically worked the dimensions around the size of the plywood because it was the biggest and I had the store cut that. So it is 4ft wide, 1ft deep, and 5 ft tall with four shelves. There is a support in the middle so I don't have to worry about the plywood sagging at all.

Now keep in mind this is my FIRST raw constructed item. Like, I bought a jigsaw, gloves, safety goggles, and a level and went to it! I didn't really see any instructions that applied to how I put it together so I just had to wing it. I am happy with how the shelf part turned out, but it was verrrry hard to get them level when nailing on the 4 corner support beams. So with the second shelf I'm finishing up tomorrow, I am going to try it a little differently. Same end result, just different path.

Oh and another realization learned? Nailing is HARD. I thought it would be the easy part! Nope. Sawing things is easy. Too easy. Nailing? BAD. For most of it I used 3 1/4" long nails. I can't tell you how many of those God-forsaken things I had to have Nick help me get out b/c they bent halfway through. Ugh. So my first nail=bent and pulled it out. Second nail=slammed the hammer down on my left pointer finger:

OUCH. Yeah. I think it is going to look a lot worse tomorrow b/c it has swollen more and the bruise is pretty big. So on the third nail, I thought to try to predrill a hole THEN drive the nail in. And that worked out pretty well! Didn't start having trouble again until I got to the 4 corner beams. All in all, not bad for a first-timer doing it blind! Not including the investment of power tools and nails, the wood only cost about $23/shelf. Yay me! Next project: Sofa table.