Back to the basement. The focus today is on making more shelves for the shelving units in the inner room in the basement.

I’ve been told that the basement as a whole was built to house a previous owner’s taxi business. The main area of the basement was used as a garage, and this inner room was probably the only actual storage space. We haven’t had a car in here for years; it’s all storage now. This inner room is particularly cramped, and it’s hard to even get things in and out because of how stuff is partially blocking the doorway. The shelves look like they’ve been thrown up without any long-term plan, and the space is very inefficiently used.

Two of the shelving units look identical to the IKEA Hejne series, which we also have many metres of in the main area. But… either IKEA has slightly changed the dimensions in the decades that have passed since this was built, or this is a very close imitation by some other firm. Because the new shelves are just slightly off and do not fit. If I want shelves, I need to build my own.

Step one in my plan was to buy a drill, but in my cleaning and sorting of the basement, I found one. It’s a cheap model and not what I would buy – hence why it’s been lying unused. (Eric had a much better one.) But given the choice between this for free or a better model for plenty of money, this is absolutely good enough.

New step one: get the drill into a usable state. The plastic had leaked some sort of substance making it all sticky and gooey. Soap and water didn’t help. I tried cleaning it with gasoline, and that got the orange parts clean, but the black still felt disgusting. Tried acetone, and that started dissolving the plastic itself. Finally I oiled it in with paraffin oil, let it rest, and then washed it again with soap and water. And now it’s all good!

I also found a workbench in the basement. This is like a treasure hunt in my own basement. Again a cheapish model, and again it needed some oiling to make the screws run smoothly, but at zero kronor spent, a total steal. No more hunching over a step stool for sawing and drilling!

Step the next was buying timber. This is when I really wished the IKEA ready-made shelves had fit. The cost of the materials on their own was four or five times that of the finished product from IKEA. It’s just cheap pine, but if every little bit costs 50 to 70 kr and I need six per shelf then I’m quickly up at 1500 kr for four shelves. And that’s not even including the screws. I don’t know how IKEA do it.