Scrap shelf to cover open corner

When I finally got the desk upstairs, that meant having to rearrange the boy's room a bit to keep things from feeling too crowded. We moved two of those pre-fab cube shelves to a different corner to make room for the desk, putting them at the other end of the wall. That corner already had a small dresser nearby, so I left the cube shelves in an L-shape to keep the corner open. Desk in, things are still feeling pretty open, everyone's happy.

fancy phone picture

The only problem is that an L-shape left an open square where the shelves meet, wasting space and inviting the inevitable nuisance of having to fetch toys/books/junk that fall in there over time. So why not throw together a square to cover it and give the boy one more surface to cover with power rangers stuff. So much power rangers.

I'd kept the crib spindles from the side I cut off, not knowing what I would use them for but thinking they looked too good to just throw out. As luck would have it, 7 of them added up to nearly exactly the distance I was looking to cover, so I cut those 7 to the measurement in the other direction, and them glued them as a square with other scraps attached to the bottom. Viola, instant shelf.

Gorilla white glue instead of wood glue

The cube shelves got attached with corner braces so they felt a little sturdier, and I flipped two to set the shelf on. As a last touch, I added an upside down three-wall brace to the back corner so things wouldn't tip over with stuff on it.

Leaving this open felt like just asking for trouble.

No more opening, no problem.

Jobs like this fill me with an overwhelming sense of dad-hood. Using scrap, building shelves, figuring out a way to jury-rig everything, I haven't felt this much like a dad since the girl spilled some juice at steak & shake and I had a handkerchief on me to clean it up with. No one even has to notice it, but I feel better knowing it's there.