I got my shelves built yesterday. Nice, today I can screw them in place and then tidy up the rest of the basement and be done with it!

Nope. Just these shelves took all day.

What I didn’t take into account:

The time it took to empty the shelves of, among other things, nearly one hundred jars of jam, and move it all out of the way. And then move it back again afterwards.

The time it took to buy more timber so that I could adjust the shelves because, while I had measures the length and the width very carefully, I had not taken into account the fact that screw holes can’t be drilled just anywhere.

The time it took to drive to the DIY shop yet again because it turned out that I did not own a wrench. What kind of household doesn’t have a wrench? This one, until now.

The time it took to drive to IKEA to buy cross braces for the shelves. Their apparent stability until now has been a mirage; the moment I started moving them around, they wobbled and wanted to collapse on the diagonal. Seriously, so much driving today.

How hard it is to move heavy shelving units with just one person.

How awkward it is to assemble a shelving unit in a room where it just barely fits. I’m glad it fit at all, I’m not sure what I would have done otherwise.

Anyway, it’s all in place now. The shelves are fit for purpose, sturdy and stable. The doorway is clear. The jam jars are sorted by content, and so are the paint buckets.