A couple of weeks ago the homeschool bookshelf collapsed. Thankfully no one was injured and we were able to repair it. To lighten it’s load, I moved a few (more like a bunch) of books off the shelves that are not in use at this time. Hopefully it will stay standing for a while.
This made me assess all of the storage shelves that we have in the house. During this process, I realized that our storage shelves in the basement are not as sturdy as I would like them to be. We actually had one collapse a couple of months ago. Looking at the listing and sagging shelves, I mentioned to Richard that we need to get stronger shelves soon. He and the boys headed to the home improvement box stores to see what was available. They priced several options and all were very much out of our price range. Since we have eight shelves in the basement and want to add shelves to the garage we are looking at 10 to 15 shelves to meet our needs. Most of the industrial shelving cost about $400 a shelving unit, so we would be looking at $4000 to $6000 total cost. WAY out of our budget.
Richard and I looked around the Internet and found this article from Mother Earth News, which is a wonderful magazine by the way. On our next date night we headed to the home improvement store to price out the cost for building these shelves.
The materials required to build TWO shelving units are:
1 1/2 inch thick plywood $21.00
16 8 foot 2 x 4s $ 2.97
1 5 lb. box 3 in deck screws $22.00
Total Cost for the units: $91.00 which makes the total cost per shelf $45.50, which is within our budget. And considering the box of deck screws will probably make more than one set of shelves the cost will probably be lower overall. For a little more than a price of 1 of the home improvement store shelves, we can have 10 shelves made. Not too bad. We have started our fund to budget for building these shelves and hope to have the first shelves made by the end of the next month.
Have you thought about your storage spaces yet?
Pax Christi,
A married woman must often leave God at the altar in order to find Him in her housework ~~St. Francis of Rome
Managing Mayhem and Multiples 