Starting to relax…..

Now that tax season is over and I have returned from the Texas trip for Mom’s funeral, I have finally had a bit of time to do some things that have been on my list for a LONG time!! 

The first of these was to do something about storing my necklaces.  For many years I have hung them on the rungs of an expandable rack and it has worked fairly well, however in recent years I have added more and more (mostly from our trips) and something else was needed.   Here is a photo of the original racks although I had already removed a bunch of the necklaces before I remembered to photograph it!!!

My original thought was to buy another rack but then had the idea to make something with wooden strips and small nails.  So, after a quick trip to Lowes to procure supplies, I headed out to the workshop to see what I could come up with. 

I decided to play a bit first and see if it would work and immediately found a problem….

…..I am not good enough at nailing to actually get the nails in straight!!!

So after some thought, I decided to pre-drill the holes and use the holes as a guide to place the nails….

It worked SO much better!!!

I measured the closet to figure out how much room I had and then measured my necklaces to determine how far apart the shelves needed to be to allow the necklaces to hang properly.

Once I had the three original shelves made I decided that I wanted to hook them all together so that I could just use two screw to attach them to the wall.  I used Gorilla Glue to attached the hanging bar and then added a wood screw from the back to further secure it…..

I only had one incident with this!!  I had a small open area where it didn’t make sense to hang necklaces so decided to make it shorter and put my bracelets on it.  This meant that there was a certain configuration that these two racks needed to be in in order to fit in the closet.   Unfortunately I glue and screwed them together in the wrong configuration!!

So, another trip to buy a few more boards and I was back in business.

Back in the closet, I leveled the shelf and screwed it in place…..

I had a wonderful time adding my necklaces and bracelets…..

…..and even more fun the next morning when I picked out a necklace that I normally didn’t wear because I couldn’t see it easily in the old configuration!!!

I made the earring holder many years ago, using screen wire attached between two wooden lathe strips.   The smaller one on the right was my original one but I really like the larger version better!!

Okay…that is one project down for the summer!!!!  

My desire is to be able to spend this summer balancing between the things that I HAVE to do, the things that I WANT to do and the things that have been long-term residents on my “To-Do” list.   Bring it on!!!