If I’m going to complain about book covers, I should also point out ones I love. Luckily, I’ve got way more covers I liked than ones I hated.

The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics (2019) Olivia Waite

Avon Impulse

Although I kinda wish the two had been doing stuff–like looking at the stars and embroidery, it’s still pretty and quite good.

One of the things I like is that this is sweet and romantic, and yeah, they’re about to smooch, but it’s not all chests and thighs and clothes coming off.

It’s obviously two women in a romantic relationship, but right here they’re enjoying being with each other and the cover doesn’t scream to me CLOTHES ARE ABOUT TO BE RIPPED OFF.

Plus, the red! The red coverings and red dresses are gorgeous, and everything looks so soft and touchable and it looks like it would be comforting to run your hand along the silk and satin and just lovely.

 
Can’t Escape Love (2019) Alyssa Cole

Avon Impulse

I want to find whoever made this cover and give them all the chocolate and gold stars.

It’s sweet and fun and is a precise representation of the characters and it is ALL THE SQUEE!

ahem.

I really like this cover.

Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure (2019) Courtney Milan

Courtney Milan

LOOK AT THIS COVER! LOOK AT IT!

It’s a GORGEOUS older woman looking completely comfortable in her skin and happy to be who she is.

It is MARVELOUS!

And it’s SELF-PUBLISHED. Yeah, it lacks some of the qualities of an expensive cover, BUT I DON’T CARE.

Because it’s absolutely lovely.

Whiteout (2017) Elyse Springer

Riptide

This cover is just gorgeous.

I enjoy looking at it–I wouldn’t be mad at all if this was art in a waiting room.

But it also matches the story and the title perfectly. It opens in winter, with the characters snowed in, and the cover looks like a snowstorm where the colors are washed out of the world.

Beautiful.

Counting on a Countess (2018) Eva Leigh

Avon

Although there are parts of this cover that aren’t my thing, the colors here are so striking and so pretty–I keep coming back to look at it.

A Holiday By Gaslight (2018) Mimi Matthews

Perfectly Proper Press

Not only is this a pretty cover, it actually pretty accurately depicts events in the book without being specific and giving something away.

She wears a rich colored red dress on several occasions, the house has gaslights (which are important to the story) and the go out into the woods (in the snow) to collect branches of pine and holly and mistletoe for the Christmas party.

And I love the way her name follows the curve of the hem of her dress.

Very lovely!

Much to my shock, Avon Impulse wins this round.

The Books of 2019

I generally try to squee about covers that are relatively new releases–either this year or last (since I don’t always read new releases immediately). I don’t have a lot of fantasy series that I pre-order anymore, and at least one of those I didn’t like the cover (I didn’t HATE it, I just disliked it; there is a difference).

The Phoenix Illusion (2018) Lisa Shearin (SPI Files)

Murwood Media, LLC

This cover made it here not because it’s perfect, because it does have flaws.

This cover made it because this is book six in a series, and the author switched from traditional to self-publishing.

So even though the author didn’t have access to the original artist, they did an amazing job of replicating the feel of the earlier covers.

Additionally, it is in no way obvious that the author switched to self-publishing: There is no evidence of terrible Photoshop, and it’s clear someone with artistic skills put this together.

Unfortunately, seeing how good this cover is just makes me madder at the big name publishing houses that give their authors utterly crappy covers: Come on publishers! If an author can do this on her own, you can CERTAINLY stop pushing out the ugly, horrible dreck.

Not that I have strong feelings or anything.

Family Matters (2018) Angel Martinez (Brandywine Investigations)

Mischief Corner Books, LLC

This cover is just fun.

It’s depicting the first story in the collection, which involved the Minotaur (WHO IS WEARING A KILT! HOW PERFECT IS THAT?) and Dionysus (yes, that god) and that’s perfect.

But what’s even better are the details: the books and tomes and scrolls made it clear that this is an impressive library. The small creature staring down from the top of the shelves. The magical cloud hovering over the two of them.

It’s just a really neat cover.

(NOTE: This is a boinking book.)

 

Circle of the Moon (2019) Faith Hunter (Soulwood)

Ace

All the covers for this series are gorgeous. I’ve loved every single one of them, but I think this might be the prettiest.

I adore the purple here, but even without the purple this would be a marvelous cover.

With magic users, covers often have difficulty portraying the active use of magic. These covers always show Nell as using magic–and in a gorgeous manner.

Additionally, since Nell is some flavor of what might be considered a druid or dryad, her connection to trees and the land is also clear.

And the moon! And the stars behind the trees!

So lovely!

All the publishers here are winners, with no publisher having more than one book in this category.

The Books of 2019

First, things first, I’m only hating on covers from major publishers. They have budgets and should know better. Independent publishers and self-published books gets points for trying, so I almost never point them out (unless it’s really egregious).

Secondly, I liked the content BETWEEN the covers of both of these books, so I recommend the words themselves, I just HATE these covers.

This year, I only have two covers I really hated, both (coming as no surprise to me) were from Avon.

Sapphire Flames (2019) Ilona Andrews

Avon

I don’t understand how Ilona Andrews consistently get such awful covers. This isn’t the worst they’ve ever gotten, but it’s not good either.

Positives are that I love all the purple. I actually love all the colors in the cover. In fact, if this cover were just the swirly stuff and colors, I’d love it!

But no, it has people. And that is always where Avon screws them over.

One of the characters has a reputation for flitting around the world, and constantly posting beauty shots on social media.

The other character helps to run a detective agency, including going out on investigations.

Can you guess which character runs the detective agency?

I really really hate how weak and secondary the women on these covers always look. Yes, the guy ends up being a super secret agent, but all we know at the start of the story is that he’s a playboy. While she looks like she exists only to be arm candy.

I admit this cover is nowhere near as awful as the one for Burn for Me, but since I despite that cover with the burning hatred of the sun, that’s not saying much.

I just want covers where the heroines look competent and capable of standing on their own two feet and fighting their own battles.

This is not that cover.

The Wallflower Wager (2019) Tessa Dare

Avon

This is nowhere near as egregious as the Sapphire Flames, but I really dislike it. It’s all really bad Photoshop, where the couple obviously were not originally on that bed, and they’ve instead just been roughly pasted into some really bland background.

Then to hide the bad photoshop job, they fill everything in with swirly colors.

And boosted the outer glow on the guy, because he kinda looks like he’s on fire.

And the less said about that facial hair, the better, because that that level of manscaping did not exist in Ye Olde Historical Times.

I’ll also note that there is no way you’d guess from this cover that the heroine is a spunky spinster who has dedicated her life to saving animals. But that’s kinda par for the course with these kinds of covers, so it’s mostly just disappointing, and a reminder of why I love the existence of eBooks.

The Books of 2019

I saw the following picture today, which brought back a book that I bitched about for YEARS because it was so terrible.

In case it’s blurred, here’s the text: 4.5 megabytes of data in 1955 in the form of 62,500 punched cards

4.5 megabytes

Let’s jump aead 60 years, and take a look at what could be considered a modern mechanical or automoton: the roomba. A 2016 teardown of a Roomba found 128 megabytes of memory.

That’s 128 MB for a vacuum that has to have a clear floor to work.

Searching for the one book that pissed me off, I found a second that I’d completely repressed, so I get to rant about TWO terrible books and not just one! Hounds of Autumn (2013) by Heather Blackwood and The Affinity Bridge (2009) by George Mann.

In Hounds of Autumn the main character has created a mechanical cat that uses copper spools for memory.

And when I say a mechanical cat, I mean a creature the size of a cat that moves and acts like a cat, including jumping on furniture and chasing feathers.

She set Giles on the floor, and watched as he moved around their table, looked out the window, and examined their feet and legs before settling by Chloe’s chair. The little cat could make decisions, albeit simple ones.

And learn. And move independently. With wire spools for memory.

And there was also this:

Included among the things it kept were data spools. See, when I took apart the hound earlier this evening, I discovered that it stored data on replaceable spools. Now, even an advanced mechanical like Giles only has a certain number of spools, and I would have to put them in and take them out. But Camille designed the hound so it could replace its own spools. The cloth cover on its abdomen had a simple bone button and the panel underneath had a simple hook closure. The hound could take its memory spools in and out itself. And it did.

Have you ever taken apart a desktop computer? How about a laptop? Tried to replace something as simple as a hard drive or add memory? You generally need specialized tools, small fingers, the device needs to be completely powered off, and yet a good percentage of the time something will go wrong and the stupid device won’t boot back up again so you have to tear everything back apart, put it back together, and hope you just mis-seated the thing, instead of getting a bad part you’ll have to send back.

But sure. A mechanical DOG can undo a mostly invisible button and with its paws and then change (and one would assume) re-thread a wire spool.

And we’re not even talking about the power needed to run such a creature. Just the amount of memory needed for independent moving and learning.

The Affinity Bridge was even worse.

This book has automatons. “Physically, they can function only if their program is loaded correctly. They operate on a series of punch cards.”

OK. Fine.

Then we get a description of them moving.

The automaton set to work immediately, crossing the room with a fluid gait, avoiding a pile of machine parts on the floor and approaching the table with the utmost precision.

“(I)f the device were commanded to walk across this workshop, it would automatically find a route around the workbench there, without having to walk into it or attempting to climb over it. This is achieved through a series of logical questions that the unit’s brain is designed to follow. What will happen if the unit walks into the workbench? How will walking into the workbench prevent it from achieving its goal? What is the quickest alternative route to its destination? Switches trigger inside the brain to enable the automaton to settle on the most effective solution to each question, thus deciding its route around the workbench. In this instance, the unit would obviously decide to alter its course, rather than face potential damage by walking into an immovable object.”

Look back at the first picture. The pile of punch cards. 4.5 megabytes.

Now consider a roomba, a vacuum which has 128 MB of silicone memory and isn’t even smart enough not to spread dog shit all over your house if it accidentally runs it over.

But you want me to believe you can have a punch card or wire spool automaton capable of independent movement and thought?

That, folks, is all you have to do to get me to hate read a book.

For future reference, the eggnog recipe I’ve been using. For one batch this year, I accidentally substituted bourbon for brandy. I’m pretty sure it’ll be just fine.

8 large eggs, separated
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1 pinch salt
1 cups heavy cream
3 cups whole milk
1/2 cup brandy
1/2 cup dark rum
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg fresh grated

In a large bowl, whisk egg yolks, brown sugar and salt until thickened and pale brown in color, 2 to 3 minutes. Whisk in cream and milk, followed by the brandy, rum and vanilla.

In a separate large, clean bowl, whip egg whites and the granulated with an electric mixer on medium speed until soft peaks form, about 2 minutes.

Slowly mix the two egg mixtures together.

Move to a large glass jar (or a couple of smaller ones) and store in the fridge for a minimum of 2 weeks. A month would be better, and two better still.

Wednesday I was lucky enough to get to go to the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens for the light show.

Yeah, there was flower pr0n galore, but the lights were really wonderful.

I took a few more pictures, which you can see if you click through to Flickr.

I may just refuse to acknowledge it is now December, and that Christmas is really close.

Nope. Still October. I’m sure of it.

I reached 200 books this month–205 at month’s end.

There was a fair amount of re-reading there, but I also managed several new releases (all of which were borrowed from the Library).

What was good this month?

I’m rereading the Fred, the Vampire Accountant series, which is tremendous fun (and there is no boinking!). It starts with The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant and is just as over-the-top as it sounds.

Being a vampire grants you many things. A sudden burst of intuition and confidence with the opposite sex sitting directly on top of you is sadly not one of them.

You should definitely read that series.

I’m also re-reading Justin Gustainis‘s Occult Crimes Unit Investigation series, which starts with Hard Spell. It’s a supernatural police procedural, set in Scranton, and it’s also marvelous.

My name’s Markowski. I carry a badge.

Also a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9 mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.

Just ignore the covers, because they’re really awful, although they’re bad in an amusing over-the-top way, rather than taking themselves seriously.

And I read what may be the best short story I’ve read in a long time (and I read quite a few short stories). Marriage, Love and a Baby Carriage by C.S. Poe is a short story about gay fated-mate penguin shifters and an unexpected baby. It is an utter delight. (There is boinking here, but even that ended up being charming).

I was attending a singles’ convention for special people like me to find their forever penguin partner. But after I paid the attendance fee, got a hotel room, and booked my flight, I found out it was specifically for guys and gals.

I actually read it twice, because it was so fun. Also, I would TOTALLY read a series about penguin shifters.

Just sayin’.

I also want to mention Whiteout by Elyse Springer, because a couple chapters in I was all, “Oh. No. I do not like where I think this is going. No. No I do not. And then read the remained of the book in a single sitting. This is very much a boinking book.

So here’s what I read:

Supernatural Fantasy
Fred, the Vampire Accountant
The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant (2014) Drew Hayes (Rating: 8.5/10)
Undeath & Taxes (2015) Drew Hayes (Rating: 8.5/10)
Alpha & Omega
Dead Heat (2015) Patricia Briggs (Rating: 8.5/10)
Burn Bright (2018) Patricia Briggs (Rating: 6/10)
Hard Spell (2011) Justin Gustainis (Occult Crimes Unit Investigation) (Rating: 8/10)

Mystery
The Other End of the Line (2016/2019) Andrea Camilleri translated by Stephen Sartarelli (Rating: 8/10)

Mystery, Historical
Penny for Your Secrets (2019) Anna Lee Huber (Verity Kent) (Rating: 5.5/10)

Mystery, LGBT
Murder Takes the High Road (2018) Josh Lanyon (Rating: 8.5/10)
Adrien English
Fatal Shadows (2000) Josh Lanyon (Rating: 6/10)
A Dangerous Thing (2002) Josh Lanyon (Rating: 7/10)
Death of a Pirate King (2011) Josh Lanyon (Rating: 7.5/10)
The Dark Tide (2011) Josh Lanyon (Rating: 7.5/10)
So This is Christmas (2016) Josh Lanyon (Rating: 8.5/10)
The Art of Murder
The Mermaid Murders (2015) Josh Lanyon (Rating: 8/10)
Holmes & Moriarity
The Boy with the Painful Tattoo (2014/2018) Josh Lanyon (Rating: 6/10)
In Other Words… Murder (2018) Josh Lanyon (Rating: 8/10)

Romance, Historical
Brazen and the Beast (2019) Sarah MacLean (Rating: 8/10) (Bareknuckle Bastards)
The Wallflower Wager (2019) Tessa Dare (Rating: 6/10) (Duchess Deal)

Romance, LGBT
Whiteout (2017) Elyse Springer (Rating: 8.5/10)
Marriage, Love and a Baby Carriage (2016) C.S. Poe (Rating: 8.5/10)
Kneading You (2019) C.S. Poe (Rating: 7.5/10)
American Fairytale (2019) Adriana Herrera (Rating: 6/10) (American Dreamers)
Portland Heat
Served Hot (2015) Annabeth Albert (Rating: 5.5/10)
Baked Fresh (2015) Annabeth Albert (Rating: 7/10)
Delivered Fast (2015) Annabeth Albert (Rating: 6/10)

And… the stats!

I’m almost certainly read a couple more books than I did last year (I’ve already finished one book today) but won’t break my all-time record, which would be 2017’s 230 books. That’s a lot of books, but since I don’t watch video, I squander my time this way.

eBook: 25
Re-read: 13

All eBooks again, and half of them were re-reads. But I did also read six books that were new or new-ish releases, so there’s that.

Genre-wise romance lead the pack, with lots of boinking. Lots of mysteries in there, and fantasy opened and closed the month, with finishing my reread of the Alpha & Omega series and starting two other re-reads.

Fantasy: 6
Mystery: 13
Romance: 20
Boinking: 18

Male authors are simply not going to make 50% of my reading this year.It’s possible they won’t even make 15% of the books I’ve read. And I’m ok with that.

Male: 4
Female: 10
Initials: 2
Male Pseudonym: 9

Character-wise, guys are doing much better, since I’m still reading lots of M/M romance. Not unexpectedly, all the books but one had at least one white main character. But there was pretty good representation with secondary characters.

Male: 20
Female: 5
Ensemble: 0
White: 24
Minority: 7
Minority 2ndary: 2
Straight: 9
LGBTQ: 16
LGBTQ 2ndary: 4

And that closes out the pent-ultimate reading wrap-up of 2019. Anything you read that was particularly good?

Since the fall leaf color is done anywhere within driving distance, we jumped straight into winter with a hike at Blackwater Falls.

Since I’ve been slacking on walking / hiking in recent months, we decided to take a relatively easy hike, and hiked part of the Davis Trail. This is the part of the Allegheny Trail that runs from Blackwater Falls to Cannan Valley State Park.

It was lovely.

Location: Blackwater Falls
Trail: Davis Trail / Allegheny Trail
Distance: 5.1 miles
Elevation: 3203-3669 feet (660 ft)

Thank you, to those who have served, who are currently serving, and to their families.

Thank you.

The eastern panhandle and the southern part of the state are the last areas to lose their leaves. As the eastern panhandle is an easier drive, that’s where we tend to head mid-November.

It was a gray day, and a past peak, although there were still trees that had some leaves.

Harpers Ferry is another place fascinating place to wander around. There is a ton of history there–and not just John Brown’s raid.

There is also some amazing beautify.

Two of my favorite spots there are ruins.

The old water-power ruins.

Wandering around old ruins (and especially finding hidden ruins in the woods) is a reminder of the impermanence of humanity. That of these man-made structures, the only things that are left are the stones our fore-bearers mortared together in an attempt to constrain nature.

And the old church.

I managed to forget to share the pictures from last week’s drive to Berkeley Springs. Neither of us wanted a long drive, but we wanted to a chance to see some leaf color, so off we went.

We went first to Cacapon SP, where a recent storm had taken down a lot of trees, so the road going up to the mountain top was closed, which was disappointing, since I’d hoped to see how the entire valley looked.

But it was still pretty.

Some nice color at the lower elevations.

Then we went to Berkeley Springs, which I always find lovely to walk around.

Beautiful!

I covered most of the big things about the remodel, but wanted to point out some of the smaller things or bits.

The Tile

As I mentioned, we had issues in that the the tub had been installed after the walls were put up, so once we put the new walls up, they were proud of the rest of the walls. This meant a lot of fussing to make sure everything was tiled and waterproofed. And again, my thanks to the gentleman at Davis Tile who spent so much time helping me figure out what I needed to do.

You can see here how the wall has three levels–the new wall with tile, the old wall with tile, and the wall without tile.

This wall–which showcases the new light that I ADORE– you can see again the steps, and also how I didn’t have enough space to put tile between the proud section of wall and the trim of the shelves we put in.

I suppose we could have gone out and bought tiny rectangles of tile, but it didn’t seem like it was at all worth it for that tiny section of mostly-hidden wall.

This is a pretty ridiculous section of wall.

Door trim, wall trim, old wall, tiled old wall, and tiled new wall.

You can also see the new air vent we put in. So much prettier than the other one AND more useful since it’s not under the sink.

You can also see that I suck at caulking; try not to pay too much attention to that.

I adore the cobalt blue tile I got to accent the white tile.

And here is a little more detail of the two built-in shelves. They could have been deeper, with the amount of space we had, but I chose to get pre-made ones, rather than try and make my own.

The Closet

Here is a little more detail of the closet.

You can see the top shelf–we tested to make sure we could easily get hard bins in and out of that space. You can also see how I made the lower shelves deeper than the top shelf. The reason I didn’t make the vertical board deeper to match the shelves is that I wanted it to be easier to get the brooms and such out of the tall open space. Plus, it allows a little more light in.

Towel Rack

As I mentioned before, putting the inset shelves above the toilet meant I had nowhere to put the towel rack. Once I discovered vertical rotating towel racks I knew this was precisely what I wanted.

I also discovered that some towels are made with loops for hanging on hooks, so this works perfectly for hand towels.

And this is right above the vent, so: warm towels in the winter!

And here’s the whole thing.

And if you stumbled here in the middle, here are the posts on the previous bits.

Demolition
The Tub and Tiling
Walls and Built-in Shelves
The Closet
The Floor

A hotly debated subject during the project was the floor–and what was under the linoleum.
I said there was wood flooring in the closet and the rest of the floor was plywood. Michael disagreed and thought the entire floor was wood flooring.

For four months we debated this, because, well, just because.

One thing we did know was that part of the floor under the toilet was spongy and almost certainly needed replaced.

Which is why it took so long to get to the floor.

I’m not allowed to use power tools that might take off an appendage, and Michal flat-out didn’t want to deal with replacing the floor.

So in September I pulled out the linoleum in the closet, and discovered that there was wood flooring under the linoleum. (Why they put linoleum over hard wood I have no idea.

It was vile and disgusting and messy and awful and ridiculously difficult, even thought I hadn’t put the bottom shelf in the closet to leave myself more room.

But after using pry bars and chisels I uncovered: this

After some googling I found recommendations on how to clean up the adhesive, and after most of a bottle of paint thinner and an entire bag of rags, I uncovered planks that were in decent shape, and certainly good enough for the floor of a closet.

Some sanding and polyurethane later I was ready to put up the trim (I bought new trim because almost all the trim in the bathroom was either destroyed during removal or not worth the effort of cleaning to reuse.

All-in-all, I was quite pleased with the result.

The it was waiting for Michael to be ready to take out the rest of the floor.

One of the things we did early on was take a core sample of the floor to determine how thick everything was. Answer: Not very. This meant we were going to have to put a very thin floor down, because I was not about to shave the bottom of the bathroom door.

We’ve got solid wood doors in the upstairs that I spent several months refinishing soon after we bought the house. They may be beat up and damaged in places (someone repeatedly shut a small dog in the bathroom, which displeased the dog apparently) but they’re solid and quite attractive despite the damage.

So I was not interested in shaving wood off the bottom of one of the better features of the house.

But eventually we looked at options and after copious amounts of nagging, Michel cut out the top layer of the floor, to expose the plywood underneath.

Surprisingly, part of the subfloor remained in decent shape, so he only had to cut out part of the subfloor to replace.

We nailed studs to the existing joists to give the new section of floor more support, and then were ready to go.

One of the things we did was move the vent from under the sink to the opposite wall.

If I’d known how easy this would be for Michael, I might have chosen a different sink, but since we had almost in choice in tiny sink cabinets, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference.

Back to the floor!

We went with a very thin vinyl floor, and managed to find an even thinner underlayment to go under it.

What surprised me was that the bathroom floor space is so small, a single vinyl board covered the floor from wall to tub. Would it have looked better to have the sheets run from wall to closet rather than wall to tub? Yeah. Would it have been easier to work with two shorter sheets / boards rather than a single one that had to be trimmed precisely.

Oh yes. Much MUCH easier. Lesson learned there.

But the floor was DONE and I could now finish everything up!

The final bits were a little bit of everything: adding the last of the tile, measuring, cutting and painting the trim, caulking (which I suck at), and looking for any little bits that needed finishing.

We got wooden thresholds, which I stained, and then we were done!

To be honest, finishing was underwhelming. This project has taken almost six months–it felt like the last steps should have been more exciting, but they were–considering everything that had gone before–relatively easy, and then it was done.

This closet was similar to (but slightly smaller than) the closet in the guest bedroom. (There is actually no closet in our bedroom.) Someone had nailed up shelves to make better use of the space, but they also left the door up.

I’ve mentioned how small our bathroom is. I may not have mentioned that there was not initially a fan / vent in the bathroom.

Yeah.

So we took off the door, put in an exhaust fan, but it was still… ugly.

I knew that I wanted a better use of space than we initially had in the closet, and I really wanted something that was not tremendously ugly. But I wasn’t quite sure I had the skills to do this. So after tearing everything apart, I took a brief break and built a bookshelf.

Once I completed that project I had more tools AND a far better comfort with the project.

I didn’t have to replace any drywall in the closet, but I did have a fair amount of patching to do, and slapped on a LOT of primer. I also didn’t remove the interior door trim, so… don’t try to go into the closet and look at the doorway, okay?

First thing I did was determine how much big I needed the top shelf to be, to pull bins easily in and out. Then, I put in the stop shelf. It’s got supports on the side, because initially much of the weight was going to rest upon that top shelf.

Why did I need the extra support? Because I wanted a tall space along the side, for brooms and such.

I decided that I wasn’t sure enough of my skills to trust most of the weight of the lower shelves onto the top shelf, so I ran a stud up the back of the closet, into which I’d the right shelf support.

Ignore the random boards I shoved into the closet, because I had nowhere else to put them. I now had somewhere on both sides to attach the shelves.

I used the pocket jig to put screw holes in the bottom of the shelves at where the studs were (or were supposed to be anyway). The right side was easier, since I was screwing into wood.

Here’s the next shelf! And yes it is, in fact, deeper than the top shelf. I determined that I could put the top shelf up higher if I had more clearance. But the lower shelves could be deeper, since they didn’t have the be maneuvered out.

I measured the crap out of everything, and found some heavy felt bins in dark blue that would work perfectly–I actually spaced the shelves to fit the bins I ordered.

I left the bottom shelf off because I was not going to try to pull the linoleum up with only 12 or so inches of clearance.

I was initially going to leave the shelves natural colored, since I used pine boards, but for a different project I found white stain (Marshmallow!) and a (mostly) clear polyurethane, and decided that would lighten the space up even more, and I ended up being quite pleased with how it turned out.

And that’s how it looks! I was extra delighted with the closet because aside from cutting the boards, I did all the work myself, and it was EXTREMELY SATISFYING.

I actually still have an empty bin, which is AWESOME since as I noted, space is at a premium in this house.