An Unplanned Small Project

Sometime back about seven or eight years ago, I installed a new hardwood floor in one of our bedrooms to be used "temporarily" as a multi-purpose room until we get further along in our renovations.  This room is slated to be the "train room" when we eventually finish playing musical chairs with bedrooms and renovations.  It actually is more like playing that numbered tiles game where you slide the numbered tiles to get them in numerical order.  In order to renovate one room, we need to move a few tiles out of place to make room for the appropriate tile.  Our numbers are still quite scrambled here for a variety of reasons though so this room is still a multi-purpose room.  

So about seven years ago, I built a walk-in closet, repaired the walls and ceiling, painted the room, installed a hardwood floor and baseboard trim.  After I installed the hardwood floor over the subfloor, I built some display shelves right next to the door to the room.  My plan was to neatly store and display some of my model trains here.

Unfortunately, the light switch is also located on this same little section of wall.  I say "unfortunately" because this means that, in order to turn the lights on or off, people need to reach into the shelves to access the switch.  Consequently, there is a risk of bumping or snagging a locomotive as your hand enters into the shelves or exits the shelves as you walk into or from the room and attempt to access this light switch.  Over the years, people have knocked a few expensive model locomotives off these shelves as they were turning the lights on or off.  I needed to come up with an alternate plan but I wasn't in a hurry because I have a very long to-do list as it is already.

Well, Sheila knocked another one of my locomotives off one of these shelves about two weeks ago.  It just so happens that this locomotive was my newest one.  On a sidenote...  since there is no rush in building my little railroad in this room, I am collecting trains and associated items whenever I see something on sale or at a used price so good that I cannot refuse to purchase it.  I've been doing this for years so I've collected quite a bit of very nice model railroad models.  

This latest locomotive casualty ended up on the hardwood floor bent, tiny pieces scattered all over the floor, parts hung off it, and the electronic circuit boards were yanked.  Now I knew I needed to do something about this problem.  

My first thought was to replace this manual light switch with a smart switch that is controlled by Amazon Alexa.  We have these switches all over the house already so adding another one would be no problem.  I got online the next day to order a smart dimmer switch. In the meantime while I waited for this switch to arrive, I wondered what else I could do to minimize the risk of more locomotive damage.

I got to thinking about the position of the existing shelves and wondering if I could somehow box in that switch so the hand would no longer swing across the shelf below the switch.  This is how damage has occurred.  As you reach into the shelves, a sleeve would snag part of a locomotive or a hand, while swinging back to the body, would knock a locomotive off the shelf below the light switch.  If I boxed in that light switch, then the hand would be forced to go in and come out without swinging across any of the other shelves.

Rather than a box, I decided to place an additional shelf just below the light switch.  There is already one shelf directly above the light switch.  Now the switch was sandwiched between two shelves.  There is still a risk of knocking or snagging whatever is on this one shelf but I could place smaller items on this shelf rather than expensive and fragile locomotives.  If necessary, I could still add some sides to box in this light switch...  maybe box it in very tightly and use the wood box as an extension to move the light switch out to the front edge of the shelves.  I'll only do that as a last resort though...  hmmm...  or maybe I should do it now?

I also started looking to use the wall space on the short section of wall behind the opened door.  In my mind, I reasoned that I could put a bunch of shelves on this wall if they were narrow enough.  Plus, the door would protect these shelves.  I could access the shelves from inside the room only when the door to the room was closed.  This seemed like a good option so I started sketching ideas.  

In the end, I chose to use the same style of shelves that I used on the opposite wall...  homemade floating shelves.  It provides a nice clean look while still being extremely sturdy.  Now we just needed to purchase some lumber.  Before we were able to get to Home Depot, I fixed most of the damage to the latest casualty.  I haven't tried running this locomotive yet since it took a fall off the shelf though and the headlight is still dangling off it like an eyeball hanging out of its socket.  I really need to see if this locomotive can run again one of these days.  Then I will repair the remaining damage.

As you can see in the above lead photo, these shelves look clean and all the trains on these shelves should be safe.

After we purchased the necessary lumber, I got to measuring and cutting.  Then I had to do a lot of sanding...  something which I really do not enjoy in the least.  I enjoy carpentry work but I do not enjoy sanding.  I had a few notches to chisel out too and then I pre-drilled all the necessary holes including blind holes.  

It started raining yet again before I finished this project so I did the painting in our kitchen.  I covered the kitchen table with garbage bags to protect the table and then started painting.  The photo below shows the shelves after one coat of white paint.  I needed to add a second coat...

Here is the new smart dimmer light switch sandwiched between two shelves.  The shelf below this switch is the one I just added to this wall.  Now we can control the lights with our voice so there is no need to reach into the shelves (most of the time).  

This little project took me about five or six half days of work to complete.  It is looking nice though and I feel my locomotives are now stored and displayed much more safely!