The weekend project...

OK, so we love this unit because it stores a ton of my old vinyl and has cd storage galore (remember my music problem?). When we moved back in, the movers wouldn't put the units back on their plinths (those base thingys) because they were afraid it would destroy them. They were right. When we got them back up, on that Friday we moved in, M was so disturbed by the state of the plinths that he was up most of the night worrying about them. He thought they were so rickety that if on side gave way, the weight of the unit would cause it to collapse into a heap of splinters. I actually slept ok that night, but as you will see below, it was not in great shape.

So, here's the base, where it sits on the plinth. You can see it sort of separating, and the triangular part tilting slightly downward. M was concern about adding any more weight to it, and the more I looked at it the worse it looked to me too.

So when we took apart completely this is what we found. It's amazing that this splindly thing held all that weight to begin with, 8 drawers of cds, each drawer can hold about 45 cds. Each of the square nooks can hold about 40 to 50 albums, and those weigh a ton.

When we moved last in 2001, there was some damage to the plinth, and I had to tape it to hold it together, this was on the back of the unit, and it shared support with the adjoining plinth so I wasn't overly concerned about it's integrity.

This was on the other side of the same plinth, and it is really wobbly. This is why, the base bowed out a bit on the side. Scary. This thing was being held together by spit and whispered prayers...probably a couple of desperate novenas, well...whats the patron saint of scary wall units? He/She was probably Swedish, and was martyred by a fallen cd collection.

I should have taken more pix of this during construction. M and I bought a compound mitre saw with the birthday gift certificate that his Mum sent him for Home Depot...THANKS ANN!! I purchased some 2x4's and M found a snazzy decorative moulding, and we decided to make our own base for this unit.

I got the hang of the saw pretty quick, I fastened all the peices together with M's help with 3 inch deck screws. Next we used 3 cans of primer, and 3 cans of semi-gloss black spray paint to coat every thing well.

Here's M sanding away before the first coat of primer went on. I didn't know how expensive spray paint was, the 6 cans cost roughly $25. They didn't seem to go very far at all.

We allowed all the new bases to dry in the garage on Saturday. After church, and a nice lunch on Sunday (fresh tomatos with garlic and basil served over angel hair pasta). We got to work. We took all the CD Drawers out, they are held in by 4 screws, and are rather heavy.

Next we assembled and lined up the unit on the new base. We also put 8 of those 'Magic Glider' thingies on the bottom of the new bases, in case we need to, God forbid, move it again.

Next we assembled the side units on it. These, literally, snap in place, this part took no time at all. Then we nailed our new decorative baseboard in place. It's really lined up nicely, I LUVZZ MAH SAW!

Then we put those heavy drawer back in, and reattached them to the drawer assemblies.

We finished around 5:30pm on Sunday afternoon. Both of us were BEAT! But we had a great sense of accomplishment and were envisioning all sorts of other projects we could tackle!

Not counting the saw, which was a relatively affortable Ryobi model, only $115, the wood cost about $25, and paint was around $25, the screws were about $3, and the nails $2, the slider thingyies were $16 for 16 sliders, so we're out about $70 - $75 give or take. Oh, and the weekend, too.

All in all, not a bad price to pay for peace of mind.

S'all for now.

CC