Disaster!

We spent the weekend away at a family party - more soon, when I've gone through the photos.

So we drove home this afternoon and didn't plan on doing much for the rest of the day, except relaxing.  The Boys had a model-painting project on the go, followed by a networked computer gaming session. 

I settled down happily in my studio, with some nice new covering paper, cutting pages and boards for a new book.  I had  finished the pages and interleaves for a photo album and reached up to put the art bag containing the rest of the tissue and interleaving papers back onto its shelf. 

Disaster struck! 

The shelves in my studio came away from the wall.  Everything cascaded down on top of me (and Sherlock), tipping me into a heap in the middle of it all!  DH and DS had to come running to help us - DS rescued the poor, frightened cat and DH rescued his poor, frightened wife!

It was all a huge jumble of fallen boxes and packs of paper, books, trays of bits & pieces, board games from the top shelf, shelving boards etc etc. 

Added to the mess was the anxiety that the wall brackets would break, landing those metal shelves on top of us.  We had to very gingerly clear up whatever we could, moving it all out of the room and stacking shelf boards in the hallway.  Then DH helped me to take down the brackets from the bent and twisted metal supports.  Once we had done this, he carefully removed all three metal shelves and took those away too.  

My poor Studio, that I was so proud of!  It's a terrible mess... Piles of stuff all over the desk top and under the desk, all over the floor...

There were some boxes already on the floor along this side, waiting to be tidied up and for their contents to be put on the shelves (!).  Now they are just part of a large and general jumble. 

In the centre there, topped by a sheet of blue mulberry paper, are the pages and sheet of covering paper for my new photo album project.  The lovely paper has two big holes, where corners of shelf boards speared it!  Yet, in spite of the chaos, the damage to this project was minimal and it looks as if I'll be able to make it after all  - some time! 

Everything else has had to be moved into the upstairs hallway, or our bedroom.  I have managed to relocate my paper stocks to the bottom of my wardrobe, although the cover-bags are just a little bit too deep and the doors don't shut properly.  It's going to have to do for now, until we can sort out what to do next.

I have had to clear the desk by the window; it's my "clever" desk, with adjustable legs - legs that clip to the metal shelving strips that are (were) screwed to the wall.  It will need to be taken apart now, so the metal strips can be taken down completely.

My laptop computer was on the desk when everything fell. I am so lucky it wasn't damaged at all.  In fact, so far, apart from the wrecked shelving and a few dented boxes (one full of sock-pet making stuff, that I fell on and squashed!), hardly anything was damaged or broken.  The paper I was about to use for the photo album cover has two holes - but I think the sheet can still be used for something, as the holes are at the edges.  A little ceramic pot I used to hold "bits" was smashed and I threw it out, the handle of a paint-brush mug was broken and a lot of little shreds of paper and bits of cotton, bookbinding thread and stuff were scattered over the floor - should have tidied them up before anyway! 

No-one was injured, though the cat was very frightened and had to be lifted out from under the pile of stuff (unsquashed though, so he was lucky). He recovered well, after a lot of kind attention from J.  I was badly shaken up and needed a stiff cuppa and a chocolate, along with a sit-down, before my knees would stop wobbling and my hands shaking.  Other than that, it's just a matter of injured pride and disappointment. 

I will need to have another think about the storage situation in my studio. Meanwhile, that pile of stuff that I've been "going to" tidy up, will have to be tidied, so I can make a much neater pile of storage boxes, containing all my equipment, scrapping supplies etc, that used to be on the shelves. 

This is obviously my own fault. The shelves must have been overloaded and me dropping a bag of paper on top of the pile was just one thing too much - that tiny bit of force needed to pull it all away from the wall. We had put the supports up carefully and used good, long screws. I think there was just far too much weight overall, pulling constantly at those metal strips. At least I wasn't sitting down when it fell, or I would have been injured by the falling shelf-boards.


Obviously wall-mounted shelving is not the solution to every storage issue! Overloading shelves is dangerous and foolish (duh!!) and I won't make that mistake again.  I was in J's room after this, checking what is on his wall shelves - nothing nearly as heavy as the things I had dumped on mine!

So, I have stopped shaking and am having an early night (8pm, sitting in bed!).  Tomorrow is Monday - jobs day - so I will have to leave things as they are.  Tuesday will have to be the start of the Big Tidy Up!

As if I had nothing else to do, eh?