Mudroom, Part 2 - Finished for Now

I'm waiting for some stuff at work to finish up, so I figured I should get this in while I'm thinking about it.  Over the last few weeks I've gotten the 2nd part of mudroom done.  For this segment I needed to add shelving up near the top and add another set of hooks.  This was, overall, much simpler than the bottom half, though it wasn't without it's frustrations.


The first thing was to put a backboard up on just 1 side.  This is because only 1 side will have 2 shelves.  The other side will have a single shelf.

I, for whatever reason, didn't take a picture in between, but I next added a couple of small pieces for the rest of the top shelf to sit on.  After that I cut the top shelf.  it is all one piece and was a royal pain to get in.  This was, because I've noted before, the walls are not square, but the shelf was.  There was several attempts at getting it into the slot and then having to take it down and trim edges.  Even then I mucked up the drywall in the corners.  Those had to be cleaned up quite a bit.

Next I put in the bottom shelf.  Once again using pocket holes to hold it all together. You might notice that the bottom shelf is a slightly different wood.  That's because I was short by 3 or 4" on the plywood sheet I had to finish this.  And it was 49" wide which meant that I couldn't get another 4'x4' sheet of plywood.  (And I wasn't going to buy a full sheet for 1 piece).  So I ended up getting some poplar.  Once painted it won't look much different.

Next up since this shelf is going to be quite visible I wanted to fill in the pocket holes.  I first put the plugs into the holes with some wood glue and let that set for a day. I also went through and put some putty in a few of the cracks and such to clean up the problems that come from the walls not being square.

Next up I used my oscillating saw to cut down the excess and then used the same oscillating tool's sanding pad to smooth things out.  Seriously, my oscillating tool has to be one of my favorite tools I own.  So versatile.

We needed to move the existing set of hooks, but putting 6 up there felt weird due to their location.  These hooks are primarily for our tall winter coats and less so the summer ones.  I may still add another set of hooks somewhere, but for now we're gonna try it with these 10.

Next up a nice couple coats of paint (though not dry in these pictures). The pocket holes are barely visible.

And finally I painted the walls.  They were super mucked up from all the construction and painting.   There are a few places I need to touch up the paint tomorrow, but overall the project is more or less completed now.  My wife is already talking about what kind of shelving she wants on the other side of the room (where I'm standing taking this picture from), but that is another project.....