Building the Marieke Way

Now that my academic life is over (for the time being), I've taken up construction. Well, OK, building things isn't exactly my forte. I don't like following any sort of plan, or even necessarily having the right tools for the job. I like to botch things horribly and then do them over. But it can be so much fun to break out the saw, hammer, and nails, and see what happens.

In this regard I fit right in to the DIY (Do It Yourself) movement here in the U.K. DIY is everywhere here, mostly involving renovation of the house and garden. It includes everything Americans would classify as construction or remodeling, from plumbing and laying tile to interior decorating. Everyone in Britain has their favorite "DIY disaster" story that they love to tell. And the spinoffs are numerous--I even saw a "DIY spa" column in one of the national newspapers when I visited last fall.

So, while attempting to embark on a DIY spa here at home, I realized I needed a bathroom shelf to keep all my bottles of soaps and lotions and creams. In our tiny bathroom there's a small mirrored cabinet, full of "boy" stuff like muscle rub and shaving brushes. The only space for additional shelves is under the sink, and it's a tight squeeze, about 6 inches wide and 18 inches tall.

The only solution, obviously, is to build the shelves myself. So... I inquired at the electrical shop just down the road about their stack of pallets. They were fresh, pristine, and piney. "Take as many as you like--take them all!" the guy said when I asked if I could have a couple.

I hauled a pallet up the road and the steep driveway and up the stairs to the back garden. Then I went back for two more. First I got out Andy's hammer to see if I could demolish the pallet by removing the nails. No such luck--the nails were embedded a good inch below the surface of the wood and were bent over on the other end besides. Sawing them apart would be my only option.

I had a nice new saw I picked up at the hardware store for £3.99. OK, it's not that nice, but it's functional and it was cheap. I also had a couple bags of nails of different sizes, and Andy's hammer. All set to go!



After a couple afternoons of laborious sawing and a short stint of exuberant hammering, I have new shelves! This is almost an entire pallet's worth of wood wrapped up in a tiny shelf unit. It's pretty heavy for its size.



Building shelves is a good activity if you ever want an excuse to bathe more often, by the way. Sawing boards is sweaty, dusty work already--then in the evening when the swarms of midges come out here, you get covered in little dead insect bodies and itchy bites as you frantically swat and wave at the bugs while trying to saw in a straight line.

So, now while my hand and shoulder muscles ache and my forearms itch and I'm covered with prickly pine sawdust and dead midges, I figure it's a perfect time for a home spa!