The Dale C. Maley Family Web Site

My daughter requested I design and build her wood shelving for her basement laundry room. Here is what the space designated for the shelving unit looked like..........

I used Google Sketchup to come up with the shelving design:



The challenge in this project was how to make 18.25 inch wide shelves. You can buy an 8 foot long piece that is 20 inches wide from Lowes for $36. It would have taken 2.3 of these boards, which is 3 for $36 each.  I decided to make my own boards using Kreg pocket screws to join the boards.

I made the vertical support and the shelves all 18.25 inches wide.  I intentionally make all pieces at least 1 inch longer than the design plan, so I could cut to exactly length in the field.  Houses are never square, so I have learned to make items in my home workshop longer than needed so you can cut to fit in the field.

Here is one of the wide boards glued and clamped up:

I filled the Kreg pocket screw drilled holes with white spackle, then sanded smooth.



I used my table saw to rip the glued up boards to the desired 18.25 width.  This is just about the max dimension my table saw fence will go out to!  I use a roller support to hold the weight after the board comes off the saw.




I used the belt sander to make all the joints flat.  I used one coat of Zinsser white knot hiding primer and 1 finish coat of latex semis-gloss enamel.

And here are the shelves ready to load onto the pick-up truck from my home shop:

We picked up a 24 inch side by 30 high by 12 deep kitchen cabinet at Lowes. Here is a picture of the installation under-way:

And here are the completed shelves:



I installed the baseboard before the shelves versus after the shelves, because it is much easier.  Everything went as planned except the vertical cabinet spacers. I added a 1.5 inch wide spacer on each side of the cabinet, to allow the door to open just past 90 degrees.  I planned on using a 3rd spacer on the back right hand side (you can't see it in the photo above) to attach the vertical wood wall to.  The back wall of the cabinet was too thin to screw to, so I attached this piece to the wall using expanding anchor bolts.  It worked fine.

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