No sing around session for me yesterday as Jane and I were visiting her mum. There was a bit of DIY work for me to, fitting some shelving in the porch. In many ways it was a very straightforward job but not having access to my own set of tools and materials meant it took longer and needed a bit more figuring out than it would have done at home.

The shelving was the type with brackets that fit into slotted rails, so the first task was to get the rails on the wall. That wasn’t too hard, as I had the essential tools of a spirit level and pencil to mark things up and a hammer-action drill to make the holes. Fortunately there were just enough suitable Rawl plugs to help the screws grip the masonry and the resulting fix feels nice and strong.

A little more challenging was the shelves themselves. In the shed at home I’ve got several planks that would have been ideal but we only had strips of wood. It was a decent pine that had been nicely aged for a long time where it was originally installed but I needed to figure out how to fit three pieces together without my normal array of tools and fixings, including clamps to hold things together and a workbench as a sawing station.

In the end, it all got done though and I’m pleased with the result, which I think will serve well.