And The Award For Most Unnecessarily Complicated Craft Project Goes To

It should come as no surprise that I own a lot of books, and that being in grad school has resulted in the purchase of many more. You might be thinking that textbooks can be sold back to the bookstore at the end of the semester, but the problem is that now see each book as an important part of my future as an academic. What if someday I'm writing a journal article, or doing some kind of statistical voodoo, and suddenly I have a question about something I studied in grad school, but I can't look it up because I sold the book back to the bookstore? That is why I can't sell back my books.

As a result of my fear of disappointing Future Me, I have amassed quite a stack of textbooks. Up until a few weeks ago this stack was taking up a chunk of the already-limited floor space in my cluttered room. After 3 semesters of accumulating books, I started to fantasize about getting another bookcase so that I could house my books like a civilized member of society, rather than a (particularly well-educated) cave person.

On a related note, my pet gerbils both died last fall. But if there's anything I've learned from devout Christians and fans of mediocre romantic comedies, it's that "when God closes a door, he opens a window." In this case, he closed the door on my gerbils, and he opened the window on a new bookcase. The bookcase in question used to support the gerbils' habitat and house all of their gerbil accessories (food, bedding, tasty treats, back issues of Better Homes & Gardens). But once they died, I was free to fill it with textbooks.

Unfortunately, the bookcase was black, which I felt wouldn't fit with the design scheme of my bedroom. Also, I worried that adding a dark-colored piece of furniture to a room already bursting with furniture would be claustrophobic. So of course, the bookcase would need to be painted. Preferably a nice light, springy green. And because I have been cultivating supportive imaginary friends in my head, that idea was met with a resounding YES!

Everything that happened after I made the decision to paint the bookcase can basically be explained by the fact that the bookcase I was repainting was one of those $40 fiberboard some-assembly-required deals. With a fancy piece of cardboard nailed on the back.

The first step was to buy supplies. I went to Home Depot's paint department and selected a color on a paint swatch that I liked. Then, because I don't like looking confused, I wandered around the store purposefully for a little while. At one point, I accidentally made eye contact with the guy that worked in the paint area.

"Can I help you ma'am?" he said. "Uh, yeah... Can I just take get this paint off the shelf, or do you have to mix it for me?" "When you're ready, we'll mix it for you." "Oh, OK." I wandered off to the plumbing area.

I called my mom and had a quick discussion about types of paint, primer, and sandpaper. Finally, I sucked it up and walked back to the paint area, ready to order my paint in a clear, authoritative way. After finding the paint guy and staring expertly at some sandpaper for awhile, I was finally able to leave with paint, sandpaper, a tarp, and a paint brush. I hadn't even started painting yet, but I was already a home improvement champion.

The first thing I did was lay out my tarp on the living room floor and rip the cardboard backing off the bookcase. I had a vision, you'll recall, and part of the vision was that the bookcase would have no back. Then I removed the adjustable shelves and began painting. After the first coat dried, it became clear that this would require much more paint. Even lightly sanded, the plasticky coating on the bookcase didn't accept paint well, and even if it had, black is a hard color to cover. Sometime between coats 2 and 3, I got a phone call from my roommate (who had been out of town) saying she was on her way back. Not wanting her to come home to a mess, I moved the whole operation into my room, where I had considerably less space to engage in my artism. A few more days passed, during which I applied 3-4 coats of paint to my project, plus touch-ups.

I had noticed during the course of all this that the frame of the bookcase, without its shelves and backing, seemed suspiciously rickety. I mentioned this to my father, who pointed out (as nicely as possible) that it was kind of a cheap piece of junk, and the cardboard backing had provided it with much-needed stabilization. Back to Home Depot I went, this time to procure some wooden triangles with which to reinforce the bookcase. Those ALSO had to be painted, and hammered onto the back of the bookcase.

Finally, my bookcase was uniformly green and beautiful, and it was time to put in the shelves and get my books into their new home. I pressed the metal shelf supports into position, and lifted the first shelf into its space. As I pushed it in, I felt some resistance. Apparently the 4 coats of paint had made the shelf a tight fit. I pushed harder, and the shelf aggressively removed a chunk of paint. OH HELL NO. I did NOT just spend a week huddled in a corner of my room, hunched over a tarp and applying coat after coat after coat of paint just to end up with a shelf-less bookcase. Before I could do anything rash (like SET THE DAMN THING ON FIRE), I put the shelf down and walked away. Once I was calm enough to deal with it, I called my mom for advice. She came up with the ingenious solution of using a razor blade to take off a strip of paint just wide enough to slip the shelves in, and then touching up any black parts that showed once the shelves were in.

So I did that, and at long last I had my masterpiece!


(This is a horrible and offensive photo, I know, but I had to use the flash and then subsequently crop out some of my junk. What was I gonna do, get out my camera and take a better picture? Ha.) (Also, note the strip of black I left at the bottom, which marks the exact moment at which I said, "Ah fuck it, it's done.")

Anyway, if you'd like to do something similar, all you need is a quart of paint, a razor blade, 4 scrap pieces of plywood cut into triangles, 8 days to sporadically apply paint, and about $30. Seriously, though: just go buy a new bookcase.