A Quick Shelf for Elaine's Dorm

Here's a quick shelf I made for Elaine's dorm room. She's in the LLC (Living and Learnibg Center) with 3 other women and there isn't enough storage for cooking stuff. So I popped over on Sunday to measure and hacked this out by Wednesday. 

I typically use 3/4" shop oak or birch plywood to make the basic shelf, with a nice-ish facade, sometimes country cove pine trimmed, sometimes modern stylish shallow oak curves, which I've leaned on too heavily of late so I decided to try something new. I found a nice piece of hemlock with lots of grain and a sweeping hook on the last two feet that I didn't notice until I got it home. Oops. 

Then I hand-drew half a curve that reminded me of an overhanging curtain valence. It looked ok in cardboard so I transferred it to wood and tacked in on for a facia. It could use a bit more detail -- something like a keystone and a bullnose crown, but I'm in a hurry. The semester has begun and their kitchen stuff is piled on the floor.

All the assembly was done in about 6 hours on a Wednesday. 

The quick assembly was possible because I cut out the shelf, sides and back (and painted the back) on Tuesday. Lucky I did all of the math right. Well, most of it. 

It turned out more square than my usual work because I recently got a better blade for the radial arm saw (a shelf-makin'-machine!) that Nan bought me for Mother's Day sometime around 2009. Somebody was feeling guilty. Don't ask. 

Here's some nice detail, with the shelf facia set back a quarter inch behind the side facia. 

And on the upper corners notice how the curve spans two pieces. 

Here are the plans, which I drew up in about 30 seconds on the textured wall of the dorm room. The dimensions and style all changed. 13" deep x 61" tall x 49" wide. Those dimensions used all but two square feet of a 4x8 sheet of plywood. And all of the facia came out of the previously mentioned piece of hemlock. A single 11'x 5 1/4" x 1" piece.

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