Tag: handle

DIY: PVC and Hardware Cloth Garden Plant Enclosure + Winter Cover

writ­ten 8/5/2024, updat­ed 9/6/2025

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Overview

What

Tem­po­rary/dis­as­sem­bly-pos­si­ble enclo­sure for patio and deck plants using PVC pipe and hard­ware cloth, fea­tur­ing doors

Why

Thiev­ing squir­rels, birds, and deer yet still allow­ing pol­li­na­tors, air, sun, and rain through

Time and Effort

Time: Sev­er­al hours to 1 day (maybe more)

Dif­fi­cul­ty: Mod­er­ate (depends on your equip­ment and mate­r­i­al sit­u­a­tion)

This is what start­ed it all. My beau­ti­ful can­taloupe brazen­ly stolen and eat­en right in front of my eyes by a crafty yet cute squir­rel

Materials and Cost

All mate­ri­als bought from Ama­zon and Home Depot

Mate­r­i­al

1″ 4ft PVC Pipe

1″ 6ft PVC Pipe

16-gauge 2′ x 50′ Hard­ware Cloth Roll

200′ 16-gauge Gal­va­nized Steel Wire

1″ PVC Hinges

1″ 90 Degree Elbow Fit­ting

1″ 3‑Way Fit­ting

1″ Tee Fit­ting

Cab­i­net Hard­ware Pulls

Quan­ti­ty

12 pipes

5 pipes

31ft

0.5 Roll

4 Hinges

8 Fit­tings

8 Fit­tings

2 Fit­tings

2 Pulls

TOTAL

Use Price

$80.40

$43.99

$24.80

$3.97

$36.68

$11.84

$26.00

$3.94

$4.38

$236.00

Owned Sup­plies:

Nee­dle Nose Pli­ers

Lines­man­’s Pli­ers

Diag­o­nal Cut­ting Pli­ers

Ratch­et­ing PVC Cut­ter

Sharpie

Mea­sur­ing Tape

Dig­i­tal Calipers

Rub­ber Mal­let

Bits/Driver

Screw Gauge

Planning and Schematics

Note: Draw­ings not to scale

Dimen­sions (L x W x H)

Out­er Dimen­sions: 45″ x 22″ x 53″

Door Dimen­sions: 20.5″ x 49″

Fit­ting Dimen­sions

3‑Way (For­mu­fit brand — 8 qty)

1¼ ” + 1⅜” = 2⅝” length

1.25in + 1.375in = 2.625in

90 Degree (Char­lotte Pipe brand — 8 qty)

1½” + 1⅛” = 2⅝”

1.5in + 1.125in = 2.625in

Tee (Char­lotte Pipe brand — 2 qty)

⅞” + 1⅜” + ⅞” = 3⅛”

0.875in + 1.375in + 0.875in = 3.125in

Pipe Lengths

Remem­ber that the ends of the pipes will fit into the fit­tings. All mea­sure­ments are approx­i­mate. Actu­al item dimen­sions may vary

Out­er Frame

42″ pipe (4 qty) — Length

19″ pipe (4 qty) — Width

50″ pipe (5 qty) — Height

Doors

17.5“pipe (4 qty) — Width

46.5″ pipe (4 qty) — Height

Over­all Weight

1 in, 4 ft PVC pipe = 1.4lbs

Over­all Weight of Enclo­sure: ~37lbs

Author’s Note

From start to fin­ish, con­cep­tion to assem­bly, this took a total of 3 days of time. Not count­ing wait­ing for parts, choos­ing parts, etc. The idea start­ed way back in 2022 when I was hav­ing issues with squir­rels steal­ing my toma­toes. I dreamed up and drew up plans, even going as far as to buy­ing much of the mate­ri­als to do it (orig­i­nal­ly out of wood and com­pos­ite wood). How­ev­er, the squir­rels quit steal­ing my stuff until this year when my veg­eta­bles and fruit dis­ap­peared one by one. The final straw was the baby can­taloupe! WARTIME. Since it would be placed on the deck instead of the ground like the orig­i­nal plans intend­ed, I need­ed a less weighty option and there­fore chose PVC pipe. Armed with the orig­i­nal plans, I altered them. You can plan all you’d like, but doing is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent! So start­ed the 3 day-total-time jour­ney (real­ly, it took about a week wait­ing for all the pieces). Many, many cal­cu­la­tions, mis­cal­cu­la­tions, frus­tra­tions, and even blood shed­ding lat­er, I’ve — at this writ­ing — most­ly com­plet­ed the project. Just a few minor tweaks and a test run before final­iz­ing the hard­ware.

Over­ar­ch­ing Ques­tion: Does it actu­al­ly work???

As of August 2025: YES, IT WORKS suc­cess­ful­ly against thiev­ing squir­rels! They tried, hard with no suc­cess! (see Notes sec­tion for more)

Process

Gathering Supplies and Equipment

Need­ed: Han­dles, PVC pipe, Ratch­et­ing pipe cut­ter, PVC fit­tings, hinges

Calculating, Measuring, Cutting, Assembling the Frame

Eas­i­ly the most time-con­sum­ing part. Using the spe­cial­ized PVC cut­ter and also a dig­i­tal caliper saved a lot of time. Just set­ting up the frame is easy. The hard part is fit­ting the doors prop­er­ly with­out cre­at­ing too much of a gap (try­ing to pre­vent crit­ter entry after all) around the door and frame while remem­ber­ing that the fit­tings add more length to each side (cal­cu­la­tions are done for you already in the schemat­ics above). On top of that, there’s the con­sid­er­a­tion of hard­ware cloth size to make as the hard­ware cloth is best wrap­ping around the pipe. If this was wood, it would be eas­i­er to just cre­ate a remov­able frame around the out­side of the cloth. Lots of re-mea­sur­ing and re-cut­ting until I got it right (or close enough).

Use a rub­ber mal­let to make sure the pieces are snug in the fit­tings

Hinges and Handles

This was more com­pli­cat­ed than it need­ed to be. Hard­ware includ­ed with the (unthread­ed) cheapo Han­dles are just too short to span the 1 in width of the PVC pipe. With­out buy­ing more or hav­ing to run out to a store, I delved into my giant box of ran­dom screws. Thank­ful­ly, I man­aged to find 4 that were both long enough and the right size (screw and thread gauges are use­ful). The Hinges snapped eas­i­ly onto the PVC and most­ly stay in place. And no won­der they stay in, because it gouges the plas­tic like no oth­er if you remove and slide them around, so make sure you’ve mea­sured where you want them first.

WARNING: Fas­ten any hinges before fas­ten­ing han­dles so that the han­dles are ori­ent­ed prop­er­ly, or at least mark loca­tions well. Because I wait­ed a year, my han­dles are now in a wonky ori­en­ta­tion

May 2025 — Hinge Per­ma­nence

Final­ly decid­ed to screw in the hinges. I was way too lazy to take the entire cab­i­net apart for the win­ter, but it end­ed up endur­ing the win­ter just fine

Used an 11⁄64″ bit, lined up the hinges on the pipe, and went for it. End­ed up using ran­dom screws that I hap­pened to have, so they’re all mis­matched and end­ed up rust­ing over the sum­mer

Attaching the Hardware Cloth

This is 16-gauge hard­ware cloth which is hard to find in stores (at least where I am). It’s big enough to allow pol­li­na­tors, water, and air into the enclo­sure, but small enough to thwart rodent and avian rob­bers. This was the lim­it­ing fac­tor for size of the enclo­sure as the cloth I used was only 2ft wide (they sell them larg­er). And no, chick­en wire is not rec­om­mend­ed. Not only are the holes too large, but the wire is weak. Also, to note, because this enclo­sure sits on the deck, there is no need for bot­tom cov­er­age. If I were to use the wood­en schemat­ics made to sit on the ground, then it would be ful­ly enclosed by wood, or extra cloth would need to be sunk into the ground (1–2 ft deep) to deter dig­gers.

The exceed­ing­ly time-con­sum­ing and phys­i­cal­ly painful part of this was the issue of how to attach hard­ware cloth to PVC. With­out spend­ing a for­tune, I decid­ed on a roll of gen­er­al-pur­pose gal­va­nized steel wire and some pli­ers. How­ev­er, giv­en how long it took to secure every­thing (5 hours! In the bak­ing sun and even through a short down­pour), I’ve been think­ing of a bet­ter attach­ment method (See NOTES sec­tion)

Twisty-ties from let­tuce are nice and long
Nav­i­gat­ing cor­ners
Cut to bend
Over­lap­ping pieces
Tem­po­rary twisty ties to hold two ver­ti­cal pieces of hard­ware cloth togeth­er
Bend­ing these under
3rd lay­er of over­lap (top, back, and side)
Twisting the Galvanized Steel Wire with Pliers

After much tri­al and error, I found that this was the fastest way (at least by hand) to tie off the 16-gauge steel wire (per­haps I should have used some­thing small­er)

Cut
Thread and ori­ent
Grab with line­man’s pli­ers
Twist
Keep twist­ing (be care­ful, though, twist­ing in the same spot too fast and hard will snap it)
Tight

Fun fact: If you feel the met­al after twist­ing, it’ll feel real­ly hot

Grab some nee­dle nose pli­ers and bend it away from pok­ing peo­ple
Safer!

Keep Going Until Completion

What’s annoy­ing is that tying off the hard­ware cloth with wire will cause ran­dom pock­ets where it bows out. Just keep on until every­thing is secure. Be aware that the ends of the hard­ware cloth and the steel wire are very sharp!

While the cam­era did­n’t focus on it, cut out pieces to make room for the han­dles
Trim­ming excess of doors
Trim­ming ends to pre­vent scratch­ing of feet or deck
Where doors meet. While does­n’t look ide­al, it works because touch­ing wire acts like a latch to hold them togeth­er
Hinges can still be manip­u­lat­ed since they’re not yet screwed in
Note the spac­ing between the hinge hard­ware. You can open or close the space just by twist­ing the hinge (hence why it has­n’t been secured until the end)

Complete!

Most­ly. No lock­ing hard­ware yet. Com­ing back to this 2 years after the fact, I’m still hold­ing strong with just a ball bungee through the 2 han­dles.

Wel­come home, can­taloupe plant!
3 total bungee cords to hold in place while in test­ing phase. Works real­ly well
Giv­en the space at the bot­tom where some­thing can push its way in, all I did was place a spare paver brick and voila!

Winter Cover

The aim was to have it decon­structable, but I was too lazy, so I decid­ed to use it as sort of a win­ter­ized green­hou­se­ish thing. My region is Zone 7B USDA har­di­ness. Two options (so far) for win­ter­i­za­tion.

Plastic Sheeting

Suit­able for mild win­ters with low dura­tion freez­ing peri­ods, about 20–40F.

Mate­r­i­al

6 mil Green­house Plas­tic Sheet­ing 12′ x 25′ (much too large)

Zip Ties

Pack­ing Tape (for cor­ners)

Pic­tures!

Plas­tic Sheet­ing. I bought entire­ly too much. Prob­a­bly need­ed half of that.
6 mil thick­ness
Zip tie secur­ing and tape for the cor­ners
Cut it off for neat appear­ance
Left open­ings around seams for ven­ti­la­tion and access
Poked a few drainage/vent holes in the top with a screw­driv­er

Plastic Sheeting Winterizing Results

2 months: hard freeze ear­ly Decem­ber for 1–2 weeks, and it’s dipped as low as the teens. So far so good. The plants seem to be doing just fine in there. I have hard neck gar­lic, straw­ber­ry, my blue­ber­ry plant, and onions.

Post-Win­ter: For about 5ish years, the win­ter had been pret­ty mild. 2024–2025 win­ter was nor­mal for this area which trans­lates to peri­ods of very cold and snow. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that meant that my plas­tic lay­ers did NOT work well enough. If tem­per­a­tures stay around 20–40F, then the plas­tic is fine. If there are hard freezes for extend­ed peri­ods of time, this is not good enough. All of my plants died except the straw­ber­ry which did­n’t mind at all and looks amaz­ing (in a 10-gal­lon fab­ric pot). The blue­ber­ry most­ly died but final­ly start­ed sprout­ing new shoots from the root late June 2025. I was dis­ap­point­ed and will update again this fall when I set up the new ver­sion of this using hard plas­tic walls instead of the sheet­ing. Stay tuned!

Twin-Wall Polycarbonate Sheet

4′ x 2′ x 0.24″ Poly­car­bon­ate Green House Pan­els. They’re a rigid plas­tic sheet­ing that are shat­ter­proof which sup­pos­ed­ly allows them to with­stand severe weath­er, and keeps the green­house both warm in the win­ter and cool in the sum­mer. The work­ing tem­per­a­ture range is: ‑42°F to 248°F (-44°C to 120°C)

Stay-tuned! I will attempt to attach this to the struc­ture and report when I’m suc­cess­ful!

Notes

9/2025 — Added a snap-on door stop made with a 3D print­er to pre­vent the doors from swing­ing too hard inward. Easy to drill and per­ma­nent­ly attach to PVC pipe if desired. Through­out the grow­ing sea­son, had plants inside then enclo­sure that were able to be pol­li­nat­ed no prob­lem. Doors made it easy to access plants. End­ed up mov­ing the corn plants inside after squir­rel rob­bery. The enclo­sure was a tad too short for the corn, so tas­sels extend­ed out, but suc­cess­ful­ly thwart­ed squir­rels that tried hard to get into the corn (they oblit­er­at­ed the corn tas­sels try­ing to pull the entire plant out). Suc­cess!! Just bought the poly­car­bon­ate pan­els for a new attempt at cre­at­ing a cold frame for the win­ter. Still have yet to attach actu­al door latch­es and am still using a ball

Ball Bungee Cord is easy to use
Door stop that just snaps onto the PVC. Can be per­ma­nent­ly fas­tened. This is not at the moment

August 2024 — It’s been almost a month since test phase start­ed, and squir­rels have left it com­plete­ly alone. No evi­dence of rot­ting, so good air­flow, pol­li­na­tors busi­ly doing their thing, vines climb­ing the cloth like a trel­lis… alto­geth­er very hap­py with its func­tion. Even the bungee cords per­form well and are easy to remove. Still have not secured hinges or installed latch­es… and I’m not sure I want to. It would make for a refined prod­uct, but the bungee cords work well.

August 2025 — Squir­rels robbed me of corn, so moved the pot into the enclo­sure. SUCCESS!!! First true test against the rodents. They des­per­ate­ly want­ed the corn, but could not get in. They even tried to pull the corn up through the top by yank­ing on the tas­sels. All that did was rip the tas­sels off the plant. They nev­er got inside! Yay!! It WORKS!!!

If I were to do it again, I would do sev­er­al things:

  • Buy hard­ware cloth that’s wide enough to not need so much over­lap. Like, one that can span from one side, to the back, and to the oth­er side. The top can be sep­a­rate.
  • If using the gal­va­nized steel wire method of attach­ment, then buy a Wire Twister Tool for Drill. Not only would that save tons of time, but phys­i­cal fatigue
  • Mea­sure the place­ment of the hinges before snap­ping them on
  • Paint it green or brown. White is so stark in the gar­den! Or if you have expend­able income, then buy For­mu­fit’s col­ored PVC
  • Fig­ure out a dif­fer­ent way to attach the hard­ware cloth (Ideas are all expen­sive yet remove­able: 2in Rub­ber Cable Clamps, 2 in Binder Rings, 6in Steel Wire Twist Bar­rel Key­chains, etc.)

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DIY: Attaching a Folding Table to an Existing Bookshelf

writ­ten 10/9/23, updat­ed 10/9/23

What: A DIY fold­away craft table attached to an exist­ing book­shelf

Why: I have a very small space to work in. This way, when I need it, I have a flat sur­face to do craft things (sewing machine, cut­ter, draw­ing, small t‑shirt press, etc), and when I don’t, I can just fold it down. No need for a sep­a­rate fold­ing card table, plus pre­serv­ing shelf space

Sup­plies: Wood, Cir­cu­lar Saw, Wood Clamps, Work­table, Router, Paint, Paint Sup­plies, Sander, Screws, Hinges, Folding/Extendable Table Legs, Drill, Drill Bits, Screw­driv­er, Tape, Per­ma­nent Mark­er, Stud Find­er, Mea­sur­ing Tape, Ruler, Safe­ty Equip­ment

Cost: $240.21 (all oth­er sup­plies already owned)

ItemPrice
3/4in x 2ft x 4ft Maple Ply­wood$39.99
#12 Flat Under­cut Screw Philips 1/2in length (25pk)$7.84
Dia­blo 7–1/4″ 40 Tooth Fin­ish­ing Saw Blade, Dia­mond Knock­out$16.24
Stain­less Steel Fold­ing, Tele­scop­ing Desk Legs, 35.4″ length w/screws (x2) $75.98
Reli­a­bilt Black 6in Strap Hinge (x2)$9.56
6‑tier Open Book­case 9.3“D x 23.6“W x 70.9“H$79.99
8oz Behr Dynasty Inte­ri­or Paint Sam­ple Size$4.68
Ever­bilt Self Adhe­sive Felt Strip$5.93
Total$240.21

Com­plex­i­ty: Easy to Mod­er­ate (fig­ur­ing out the hinge sit­u­a­tion was the biggest headache)

Time: 2–3 week­ends (1 day + a week to dry paint, 2ish week­ends to gath­er mate­ri­als, measure/calculate, and do it)

Reference Images

Process

I had to buy a book­case to fit a very small, spe­cif­ic space right next to the clos­et so that the clos­et door could still open, mean­ing that the shelf has to be rather shal­low. Because the shelf isn’t very expen­sive, though, the shelves’ thick­ness­es are thin and that has to be tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion.

Wood

I chose Maple Ply­wood. Was think­ing about MDF, but it was too flim­sy, too heavy, and too dif­fi­cult to uti­lize hard­ware with.

Once the piece of wood is obtained, per­form mea­sure­ments and cal­cu­la­tions, mark them, and pre­pare a work­space to make nec­es­sary cuts. Make sure to avoid knots!

Learned that not all saw blades are cre­at­ed equal. Used a fin­ish­ing blade on the cir­cu­lar saw for a smooth cut through the ply­wood. Taped off the edge to pre­vent splin­ter­ing, and then set up a jig to con­trol the cut line. To do that, use anoth­er, straight piece of wood clamped to the work­table where the cir­cu­lar saw guide will glide against.

Left: work set­up, Mid­dle: jig and taped off cut line, Right: Cut!!!

Test­ed the new­ly cut piece, found that it was still too long, mea­sured again, and back to cut­ting! Same set­up: tape, jig/guide.

Handle

After por­ing over lots of hard­ware, I did­n’t like any of the offer­ings and they were sur­pris­ing­ly expen­sive, plus I only have 3⁄4″ thick­ness to work with. Then some­one rec­om­mend­ed just cut­ting out a hole as a han­dle. What a great idea, and it does­n’t cost any­thing because I already have a router (no jig­saw, which would have been even eas­i­er)!

Decid­ed to use drill bits (step­ping up sizes in suc­ces­sion to make the holes larg­er and bits eas­i­er to con­trol), then spade bits (just be sure not to use too large of a spade bit. I did that and messed up the cut, hence the weird mis­take on the mid­dle hole. Should have just stuck with the 5⁄8 which made a hole bit enough to fit the router bit). Strong rec­om­men­da­tion to mark on the UNDERSIDE of the wood. Thank good­ness my spade bit boo­boo only affect­ed the under­side

Just try­ing to both remove some struc­ture and widen the holes enough to allow the router in

When work­ing with routers, BE SURE that the bit is ALL THE WAY IN. Mine kept fling­ing out because I did­n’t make sure of that (actu­al­ly, I sim­ply for­got how to use it). Super dan­ger­ous! I high­ly rec­om­mend using a guide/jig for the router if you don’t have a router table.

Left: router bit all the way in; Cen­ter: jig for the router; Right: Almost done!

Done! Note how I cut on the under­side of the wood
Paint

Ugh. I hate paint­ing so much!

Rec­om­mend­ed sup­plies: mini roller, roller tray, tow­els, tack cloth, sand­ing discs, sander, bench pucks (to ele­vate).

When con­sid­er­ing paint, I want­ed to be sure that it would be able to with­stand some wear and tear, so I went with a nice paint. The sam­ple size was per­fect for only cov­er­ing one side of the table­top with 3 coats.

I real­ly hate the sound of sand­ing wood

I messed up with the paint col­or. Tip: When col­or match­ing, DON’T USE YOUR PHONE PICTURES. The post-pro­cess­ing or light­ing will mess it up and you’ll get the total­ly wrong col­or like I did. Thank­ful­ly, the shelf came with veneer stick­ers which I brought with me to paint match the 2nd time around.

Mis­take:

Redo:

Tack Cloth
Much bet­ter

Behr’s Dynasty and Mar­quee paints are awe­some

It takes over a week before the paint will quit being so sticky, espe­cial­ly if there are sev­er­al thick coats. Appar­ent­ly, it can take up to sev­er­al months to cure all the way!

LEgs

It’s real­ly hard to find legs for some­thing like this. There’s always the option of a fold-out diag­o­nal brac­ing (as seen in the ref­er­ence images above), but I want­ed ded­i­cat­ed legs since I’m plan­ning on putting heavy items and pres­sure on it. End­ed up find­ing a com­pa­ny off Ama­zon that allows you to choose a height and will even do cus­tom orders. The one I chose tele­scopes and folds!

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, they’re sent from Chi­na, so it took longer than I’d planned. The prod­uct was good qual­i­ty. There end­ed up being more holes than screws… So, I just secured it until it seemed sol­id enough.

Steps: Mea­sure, mark, awl, pilot hole (used tape to pre­vent punch­ing through), install

Upper Left: had a bit and screw gauge which was super help­ful; Cen­ter Top: Used an awl to help guide the drill bit and pre­vent slip­page; Upper Right: Mea­sured then taped off the drill bit to pre­vent myself from punch­ing through to the oth­er side of the table; Bot­tom Row: I’m not sure how many screws are nec­es­sary, so I just installed all that were sup­plied

Did­n’t repaint the under­side with the brown paint because why?
Hinges

Took me for­ev­er to choose a hinge. Log­ic might point in the direc­tion of a piano hinge, but I fig­ured that the 3⁄4″ board vs. 1⁄4″ shelf thick­ness might be a lot to weight and result in pos­si­ble frac­ture, so decid­ed on strap hinges to help dis­trib­ute the weight and pre­vent pos­si­ble break­age from repeat­ed use. In ret­ro­spect, I won­der if a piano hinge would be bet­ter? It would cer­tain­ly have been a much eas­i­er install. I also bought and con­sid­ered sup­port hinges on the sides though did not use them.

Most of my time dur­ing this project was cal­cu­lat­ing, mea­sur­ing, and try­ing to use tape to help with visu­al­iz­ing the end result

Test piece with tape
Cal­cu­lat­ing that gap is the worst

Spent sooo much time try­ing to visu­al­ize and cal­cu­late things like strap hinge gap and clear­ance. This is why a piano hinge would have been way more straight­for­ward

Hard­ware. What do you use to install on a 3⁄4″ piece of ply­wood? What if it punch­es through to the oth­er side? Short screws are real­ly hard to find. I end­ed up set­tling on #12 thread 3⁄4″ length flat head screws. 3⁄4″ length on 3⁄4″ thick­ness?? The met­al hinge itself should give just enough buffer to pre­vent a punch-through.

Time to install the hinges to the table­top. At some point, you have cal­cu­lat­ed as much as you can, so you just have to do it. I was incred­i­bly ner­vous doing this. You can’t redo it after every­thing you’ve already done.

I had to turn to the inter­net to find the screws for the 1⁄4″ shelf. I got #12 gauge 1⁄2″ length screws. Same with the table side, the hope is that the hinge, again, will buffer enough to pre­vent a punch through

The ply­wood was too heavy for me to lift on my own, so I thought maybe lay­ing the book­shelf on its side would help. It’s fine for the top hinge when lying down, but it end­ed up skew­ing the bot­tom hinge. The best bet would be to jig up some sort of sup­port, find a helper, or bet­ter yet, find a table/chair that will hold the board up steadi­ly and flat while you secure the hinges. Mine is off-kil­ter because I laid it on its side. Dog­gone it!!! I don’t rec­om­mend doing it this way.

Laid that shelf on its side to try and install the hinge straps. The lit­tle felt pieces you see on the under­side are just adhe­sive felt strips that are cut to cush­ion the met­al legs as its fold­ed up against the wood

If you insist on using this method, then at least turn the book­shelf to the oth­er side to help pre­vent skew­ing, and to not do it on car­pet if pos­si­ble. The prob­lem is that not only is the ply­wood heavy, but so is the shelf. Try­ing to flip it onto the oth­er side has a high chance of rip­ping out or break­ing the already installed hinge. That’s why I still do not rec­om­mend this method, even if it’s doable. Just rig up a sup­port for the table or find a helper. It’s a waste espe­cial­ly giv­en how long it took to even get to this point of the project. Ugggh!

Wall anchoring

DON’T SKIP THIS STEP!!! Seri­ous­ly!! The table is heavy com­pared to the book­shelf, so it WILL tip!

Just be sure that every­thing is lev­el (I had to use a wood pan­el under­neath plus card­board box shims to make it lev­el) and that the car­pet (if your floor is car­pet) isn’t imped­ing any­thing, and then use wall anchors! Find a stud or invest in some real­ly nice dry­wall anchors. I’ve always used the E‑Z Ancor brand and like them a lot.

Super sol­id!!

End Result

In the end, I chose not to use the sup­port hinges I bought because it was too much work, too com­plex look­ing, and it seemed steady enough with­out it, espe­cial­ly with the shelf anchored to the wall. I have yet to try it out with any projects, but I will! Even­tu­al­ly!

Though I’m dis­ap­point­ed in the instal­la­tion mis­take, I am just hap­py to be done with this project that I thought would take be 2 week­ends but end­ed up tak­ing mover a month. Why? Weath­er (I try to do things out­side since I lack a ded­i­cat­ed work­shop), deliv­ery wait times, mess­ing up on the paint, and miss­ing hard­ware.

For ref­er­ence, the table sits about 36″ off the ground, the height of a bar-height table.

Project Images

The upper, unfin­ished wood pic­tures are when the wood was uncut. There are 3 open shelves above and 3 under the table­top