I finally finished putting a shelf into what had previously been a useless triangular shaped brown shag carpeted monstrosity capped with an unfinished half round in one of the kids’ walls. Shelly had enough of the mess and wanted Shea to have additional storage space. The only problem was that this particular space and its odd dimension did not lend itself to out of the box solutions . . . so custom it was.
I ripped out the brown shag and the half round. Next I framed a wall in dividing the space into 1/3 – 2/3 d’s and framed another wall at the far end for the shelf to rest on. I used thick USB board for shelf and the drywalled and spackled the wall board. Next I layed bamboo flooring where the carpet had been and on the new shelf. I textured and painted the forward portion of the shed wall to match the rest of the room and then made trim pieces for the outside edges of the floor and shelf.
I couldn’t find a milled piece with an interior dimension large enough to cap the shelf’s outer edge. I needed 1 3/8″ on the interior dimension and that wasn’t happening. What ended up doing was: taking two flat trim pieces and cutting them to length; nailing one to a 2 x 2 with the top edges even; putting a bead of epoxy on the top edge; clamping on the other piece on using vice grips; removing the trim from the 2×2; sanding and finishing; and, installing. Finally, I completed to project using bamboo quarter round for a finished modern look. Shelly loved the final outcome and I was happy with it too.
The biggest challenges for this project were: working in the tight space at the small end of the triangle; matching the texture of the drywall; (I used a sponge and its good enough) finding trim pieces large enough (I ended up making them); and, getting work done when dealing with the demands of four kids and a full time job.
