Bookcase Fortress of Solitude

For those of you who know me, you know that one of the longest-running of the Scattered Random Projects has been the bookcase that I’ve been building. It’s probably been over 2 years since I started it in grad school. I’m not overly concerned with this lack of progress, because really it’s just nice to have it there to putter around with every once in a while when I need to take my mind off of other things in life. Sort of a “It’s the journey, man, not the destination,” kind of thing.

Well the other day I was looking around my new apartment, and realized that I still have a lot of crap sitting around in piles. “Wouldn’t it be nice if I had a more efficient way of storing all of this crap, especially the books,” I thought to myself. Later, while noticing that one of the things taking up space in my apartment was unfinished bookshelves, I had what many authors call a “Eureka Moment”.

The task of finishing these bookshelves has gotten more complicated, now that I live in an apartment, and not a nice rowhouse with a full basement/workshop area. Really, the only task left for finishing the bookshelves is the literal “finishing”, or applying varnish to the outside. The sort of horribly messy task best accomplished in a garage, with unfinished concrete floors and separate ventilation from human-inhabited spaces. Since I don’t have a garage, I had to improvise an isolation chamber for my bookshelves. With suggestions from my co-worker Nader, I created the Bookcase Fortress of Solitude. Basically, this consists of a plastic-enclosed 6ft. x 6ft. area with an open window.

I must say it worked out rather well. After arduously hand-sanding the whole thing with 220grit sandpaper, I just finished one coat of polyurethane over the whole structure (or “carcass” in the woodworking lingo) and it looks pretty good. It only took two and a half hours for the sanding and varnishing. Probably the sanding took a lot longer because I had to remove all of the greasy hand-prints of the movers.

We’ll see how long it takes before I can finish the second coat! Now to leave my apartment for a few hours so I don’t gas myself…