Shelves in my shed.

Way back in 2008, when I lived in Arizona, I bought a bunch of Ikea shelves to organize the garage. In February of that year, my wasband and I, supervised by our neighbor’s kids, built the shelves on one side of the garage. It took nearly the whole day to get that job done and when it was over, we were exhausted. The idea was to do the other side of the garage on a future weekend.

But like so many things I planned with my wasband, it never happened. The extra shelves sat languishing against one wall for more than five years. Finally, when I realized that I was going to be spending the entire winter of 2012/2013 in my house and had nothing better to do than pack, I packed up those loose shelves, leaving the built ones behind. The packed shelves were moved up to my storage space in Washington in September 2013 with the rest of my belongings.

Last week, I lucked upon an excellent deal for a 6 x 8 shed. I realized that I’d be able to store a lot more in the shed a lot more neatly with shelves. I measured those Ikea shelves and I measured the shed’s inside wall. Would you believe the shelves were just 1/4 inch narrower than the wall? They’d fit perfectly.

I built them today. Rather than use the relatively short vertical posts I already had, however, I bought some new 1 x 4s, 6 feet in length, so the shelves would be higher. So part of construction meant drilling new holes. I had all the tools I needed to make the job a snap — I’m really building quite a collection of power tools! And the difference in the shed is amazing; you can see for yourself in the time-lapse video I created.

The project took just over 2 hours from beginning to end. I’m very happy with the way it turned out!