Moby Shelf

I'm getting really tired of our dining room. It's messy and cluttered all the time because clearly we *want* to use it for things, but it's not a practical room at all. Case in point: the chairs around the table are always weighed down with jackets, coats, and sweaters. And I'm tired of it.

I decided to hang a shelf! It's not that big, but it has two small double-hooks, thus enabling us to hang four items. Plus, we already own it - no money to spend!

First, let me explain that on the back of the shelving unit are two keyholes, spaced 16 inches apart, which meant I had to put two nails in the wall, spaced exactly 16 inches apart and level to one another. By the way, I don't own a level. I went to Jake's workroom, grabbed the hammer and two large nails (though the shelf itself is relatively small and light, I thought large nails were better because the shelf would be weighed down with jackets). This was my first mistake.

The first nail went in without trouble. I inserted the head of the nail into the keyhole in back of the shelf and held it up to check the height and to check where the next nail would need to go. I penciled the wall in several places and set work with Nail #2. Again, no problems. Triumphant, I hung up my shelf. Umm, or I tried to anyway.

Nail #2 was about a centimeter too far to the right. *sigh* Not a problem. The hole will be behind the shelf anyway, right? I pulled the nail out and started hammering it in the proper location. I hammered and hammered and the nail... went nowhere. It didn't move. There was a stud right where it needed to be. Thinking that I was somehow stronger than the stud, I proceeded to hammer the hell out of that nail. And the nail did move, only not how I wanted it to. I managed to make a hole in my wall, about a centimeter in diameter. Back to Jake's workroom where I got the spackle and putty knife.

Because I've never hung anything in my life, I foolishly decided to try again with the nail. This time slightly higher and to the right (I would move Nail #1 after properly installing Nail #2). No dice. Ok, a little to the left? Nope. More spackle.

Determined to fix this problem, I went to google and found this. They were hanging a shell just like mine! Turns out what I needed was self-drilling anchors. We didn't own any of those. I grabbed the baby, and we headed to Home Depot. I even remembered to take the shelf along, just in case.

Home Depot was uneventful - I found the self-drilling anchors on my own and gladly spent the $1.68 to bring them home with me. Once home, it was baby's naptime, but the wall I was working on is the wall in front of his bedroom and thusly his crib. I promised him that once Momma was done, he would have his nap. He sat happily in his highchair, munching away on his organic crunchin' blocks, sipping his milk, and watching his possessed mother go all Captain Ahab on the dining room wall.

The self-drilling anchors were not nearly as self-drilling as the name implied. I went back to the workroom for the power drill. I didn't think it had much charge, but I was sure it would do the job quick enough.

Wrong again. The drill was as ineffective as the screwdriver had been. And then the drill ran out of charge. I plugged it in and put the baby down for his nap.

By this point, my dining room table was covered with a small bucket of spackle, the putty knife, the hammer, two nails, and the small package of self-drilling anchors, not to mention today's mail, two of the baby's jackets, and one lonely plant. I sat down at the computer and did nothing for an hour.

Finally, after the baby woke up, I resumed my battle. This time I put my weight into the power drill, now charged, as it screwed the self-drilling anchor into the wall, and suddenly... suddenly! It moved! It went in the wall!

The second anchor gave me almost as much trouble. I had the brilliant idea to give it a start by hammering one of the nails just barely into the wall to create a guide hole, then drilling the anchor in. It totally worked.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, my shelf of triumph: