Shelf for the hallway
The hardest part was the glue-up, which took four tries on its own.
The design of this page is deliberately plain so that it will still work on an old phone, much like a battered toolbox. I took photographs at every stage in the small room above the stairs, which turned out more useful than the notes. The most useful thing I learned from a reader from Bologna was to buy the cheap version first. Feel free to borrow any of the notes about film cameras from this site, and tell me how it went.
Everything here was done with basic tools, mainly a secondhand bicycle and a lot of patience. Pages here change slowly, usually every few weeks, and that suits film cameras just fine. If you want to try something similar, ask before you buy and leave room for mistakes. I try to answer every letter, whether it comes from Bologna or further away, even if it takes until the weekend.
How it went
- Tidy up and write notes
- Sketch it on paper first
- Show it to someone honest
- Gather materials and tools
Notes
There is a short list of next steps, starting with the uneven feet and the last coat of paint. It took three wet Sundays and plenty of tea before the result looked like something I would show anyone.
The first version, made on a long weekend in 2026, was rough, and most of the work since has been quiet improvement. Some of the older notes about film cameras are out of date, but I keep them as a record of the mistakes.
A second attempt, early in 2026, went much faster. I kept a short log at a borrowed workbench while working on it, mostly so I would remember how long each step took. Halfway through I changed my mind about the materials, which someone at the library had suggested from the start. An old colleague helped with the wiring, and the result is better for it.
Notes on this sit in the same box as a folding table and a drawer of string and tape. Thanks for stopping by; everything here was made happily, mostly at a friend’s place across town. Materials came from the scrap bin at a local workshop and the back of my own shed, which made the whole thing much cheaper.