Hack

I spent most of my Sunday doing an antique hack, which is like an Ikea hack only not with furniture from Ikea. This sort of DIY interior design has also unkindly been called frankenfurniture... but only by me about the mad abominations of other people. My work is of course sublime in its grace and craftsmanship.


A few weeks ago I bought an old art deco wardrobe from a junk shop, and I've been converting it into a cabinet for all of my CDs and DVDs. At first I installed four shelves, but somehow, despite the fact that this cabinet was wider than my old CD rack, I could barely fit them all in. So on Sunday I made another two shelves, and squeezed the existing ones closer together, so that I have enough space for the 350 CDs and 100 DVDs I want to store in there.


However, I've come across two tiny flaws in an otherwise brilliant design:


1. The fixed mirror in the centre makes accessing the middle of the shelves really, really difficult.


2. Like a lot of inexpensive furniture from the first half of the 20th century, the wardrobe is made from soft pine and fairly thin plywood. 350 CDs weigh approximately 30kgs, and the shelves and the DVDs add another 30kgs... all pressing down on flimsy veneers and lackadaisical carpentry. I've already noticed that the top of the wardrobe appears to be a couple of centimetres narrower than the bottom, as the weight pulls the sides inward. I keep worrying that I'm going to come home one day soon and find the whole thing collapsed in on itself, probably taking out my new stereo, my vintage lava lamp, some antique crockery and The Only Things That Make Life Worth Living (also known as my MST3K collection) at the same time.