La fin - Homemade art shelf part TWO

Sooo my art shelf is all finished!

First of all, if you don't remember art shelf part 1, please refer to this post.

Basically where I left off, everything was done except for the top, caulking, painting, the siding for the back, and moving it into my classroom.

The first thing that I needed to do was go to Home Depot and get paint.

Simple, right?

Obviously you've never been out with me.

Apologies to Home Depot for this one.

Anyway. Let's move past that, shall we?

The first thing I had to do was caulk the cracks in all the corners. If you haven't used caulking, it's FUN. Really, it's super satisfying, it's like playdoh mixed with glue and it makes everything pretty. It's awesome. 

 Then I had to paint the wainscoting that I bought for the back pieces. 

 While I waited for Cody to come cut the wainscoting, I started painting!

 And painting.

 Then Cody began attaching the back panels. While I painted.

 And painted.

 And then.. it was DONE!

 I absolutely adore it. It reminds me of Cape Cod, and I feel so happy everytime I see it. Especially when you know what shelf it's replacing.

 See? This is what my art supplies were stored on before.

 And here they are now!

Huge thanks to Cody for all of the help with this project. I am not confident with power tools yet, so he did all of the hard work while I held things and used Gorilla Glue and made sound effects (read: eeee ee ee e ee oooh ooh ahh ahh.)


Aaaaaaaaaand that's it!

My biggest project to date

This is the first time I'm going to post a half finished project, only because I have been on it for the past month and we made such progress today and I want to share!

Basically, I decided about a month ago that I really wanted to have a great art shelf for my classroom. Something like this. But look at the price!! Obviously I don't have that kind of money. So one day while I was working at the daycare, I drew up what my dream cabinet would look like:I even tried to write down measurements, so that Joel would be more willing when I asked him to make it for me. Joel and Cody took me to Home Depot, and we bought a huge piece of MDF (which was terrifying to bring home, but I won't start on that.)

When I got the MDF home, I traced out all of the pieces onto it (which I planned on a piece of paper first) so that Joel and Cody could make the cuts. A couple of days later, I had this:
I did a REALLY quick, sloppy white coat of paint on the pieces as a base. These sat in our living room for a few weeks, until today, when Cody and I finally got a chance to go out and build the start of my DREAM SHELF! I took some pictures as we worked. Cody did all of the nailing, but I had the important job of putting GORILLA GLUE on everything. Here's me holding the bottle:
I did appropriate sound effects every time I glued, don't worry.


Great paint job, huh?
This is where I will store tupperware buckets full of markers, pencil crayons, etc.

I must have been Gorilla Glue-ing in a lot here, because there are no more pictures until the end:

Yay! The right side is for tupperwares, and random supplies on the top. On the left side, paint bottles will go on the bottom, legal sized paper on top, and the three shelves above are for regular sized paper. Beside that, I will put scrapbooking papers standing up.

Isn't it wonderful?
Here's what's left to do:

• Buy a bit more MDF for the top
• Buy thin slats of wood for the back
• Caulk the little gaps between the shelves
• Paint the whole shelf the color of the second swatch here
• Decide if I want to do a lip around the top
  

Hopefully I will be done this next week, so I can put it in my class before the beginning of school!