Inset Shelf in the Basement

A couple years after we moved into our house, the furnace exhaust pipe started to leak water where it entered the chimney. The flue gases were cooling too much, which caused the water vapor to condense and rust through the flue pipe. This is due to the fact that neither our general contractor nor the mason that worked on the chimney could read and understand blueprints. Rather than putting the chimney flue inlet on the side of the chimney that's in the furnace room, they put it at the bottom of the basement stairs outside of the furnace room. Since the basement is cooler than the furnace room, the water vapor condenses and can cause trouble. (Side note here: when you own a house it's all about water. You have to make sure it goes where you want it and never goes where you don't.) We got it fixed eventually by installing a very expensive length of insulated stainless steel flue pipe. Before we got there, though, I thought that if I could equalize the temperatures between the two spaces, the condensation may not build up. So to that end, I took out a section of drywall in the furnace room wall. Of course, that didn't work, and now we had a big old hole in the furnace room wall: definitely not up to code. Hence, this set of shelves.

I used left over trim from the porch project to make these shelves. They sit right in the spot I cut out and actually look like they belong there.

I'm not sure why, but for some reason I did not fire up the compressor and use my finish nailer for this project. I went old school and used a hammer and nails. I managed just fine, but the nailer would have been helpful for those times when I was holding wood with one hand and needed to pop a nail in. To me, that's the primary benefit of using a nail gun: when you work alone, you don't have the extra set of hands to hold things together while you nail them. Being able to pop one in easily without a lot of fuss makes a big difference.

Here's the hammer I used. This one belonged to my brother Jamie and I've held on to it since we were kids. We each got one for Christmas one year; I think I was 8 or 9. Anyway, it's a special tool that I'm glad I have around and can still use.

Basically, I built a box that was half an inch smaller in height and width than the hole I was trying to fill. After making sure it fit, I added the shelves, nailed the back on, and attached the trim. Then, from the back, I used some window shims to get it in nice and snug. A few finish nails hold it in place.