Shelves.

Other than the kitchen (and some rough wooden ones in the basement), this house doesn't have enough of them, and I have waaay too many books. Hiring a finish carpenter to build them was out of the question, so I shopped around, and found three 28 by 72-inch units on sale for only $25.00 each. Such a deal! All I had to do was assemble them, put them in place, and put the books on them!

(At least, so I thought.)

The boxed units were incredibly heavy and I could barely get them into my car. Hours later (with very sore arms and lower back), they were finally assembled. What I had wanted was a large bookcase that would take up most of a wall, and there was an ideal wall which would allow the three bookcases to be aggregated as one. The only problem was that there were only two electrical outlets in the entire room, one being located right in the middle of the wall slated to become a wall of books. Cutting a hole for an outlet in a bookcase seemed flaky, and running extension cords behind the bookcase seemed even flakier.

So I thought it over. Extending the outlet made sense, and raceway wiring does not look bad when done properly. So it was off to the store for materials.

But not so fast. The problem with the outlet I wanted to extend was that it was old and not grounded, and the nearest source for a good outlet was in an adjoining room. This meant drilling, fishing through walls, and many hours more work -- just so I could have a decent outlet.

But finally, the job was done, and I was able to put the shelves in place and screw them together as one large wall unit:

It's easy to say, "I just want some shelves for books."

But just one thing leads to just another thing, and pretty soon you're talking real work.

Quite incidentally, while I was working yesterday I heard a very odd droning sound in the air over the house.

It turned out to be the Goodyear Blimp -- flying directly over my yard!

Obviously, this is an omen from the gods. Perhaps they are telling me that there is something more important going on than the installation of my new shelves....

UPDATE:

A ride in the Goodyear Blimp

(Via Ann Arbor News.)