Day Seven-forty: a new beginning

We couldn't let idle hands stay that way, so we tackled a new project that we teased back in October. One thing that studio 2 needs is a little shelf to display curios. We had cut the wood a couple months ago but put it aside to focus on the kitchen. With that done and a little time to cleanse our reno palate we got back to work.

Step one was to lay out the two shelves on the rails. We figured out how high to put them on the rails and how much they should overhang. To keep the rails at the right distance we cut some plywood into spacers at the top and bottom.

As a reminder, here are the braces for the two shelves.

The next step was to glue the shelves in place. Here is where the plywood spacers really came in handy.

We prefer a clean look with as little metal showing as possible, so once the glue dried we put four small nails through the rails for some extra assurance. We've found the wood glue to be pretty strong but you never can tell.

Next up we glued the braces in place. Their length (hypotenuse) is such that the two sides of the isosceles triangles that they form are 5 inches. How to keep them from sliding down while the glue dried? We put little spacers under the top shelf...

and a heavy board under the lower shelf. When this dried we put four small nails through the rails into the braces, again for insurance.

And here's the final result. It needs some sealer to protect and brighten the oak and then we'll hang it because a shelf so close to the ground isn't very practical.