Another shelf-ish project

It looks like I'll be teaching the bulk of my classes from my Command Center this semester.   In fact, it ought to be an especially interesting version of teaching, because my students are all clustered together in a city in China -- the consulates haven't been open, so even if our College were wide open (which it's not; it's a very mixed kind of open), they would still be cooling their heels on the other side of the many oceans.  

So, I'll be teaching across thousands and thousands of miles; I'll be teaching across 12 time zones; I'll be teach across cultural and language barriers; and I'll be doing it all from the comfort of my own home. My class will be at 6:30 a.m. my time, 6:30 p.m. their time.  It should be fun.   

I'm still pinching myself at how fortunate I was to have splurged (unlike me) on a pair of really nice chalk boards for my home last fall.  Because of this, I can perch my laptop computer on a tall stand, point it at my chalkboard, and start writing and talking.  It's an awesome way to present mathematics. 

The only difficulty is getting a tall stand.  Last semester, when the pandemic first struck and we were all in Scramble Mode, I snagged a bookshelf from the living room to set my laptop on, but it was less than optimal.  What I *really* wanted was a tall stand on wheels, one that I could move in front of the chalkboard when I'm teaching, and get it back out of the way when I'm not -- which is most of the time, really.  

And then, about a month ago when I was walking around the neighborhood, I saw an ugly skinny dresser, kind of falling apart, out at the curb waiting for the Garbage Collectors to haul it away.  And so I hustled home, fetched my handy-dandy green garden wagon, and returned to my neighbor's trash pile.  I became a Ringer Garbage Collector for the moment, and I did my job with gusto.

I got to spend a fun (loud) day sanding off the old ugly paint.  (Like, seriously ugly.  You can tell this dresser had been loved by kids, who had hand-labeled the drawers in pencil:  "board games", "cards", etc).  I removed the metal door pulls, which had been painted in the same ugly paint.  After googling, I decided to soak these in boiling water -- and sure enough, that allowed me to remove the paint from the metal knobs and pulls pretty easily.  Yay for being in hot water!

Then came hardware time.  I used assorted left-over screws and nails to reattach the side panels, which had been coming loose.  My daughter has gifted me with a bunch of furniture wheels, so I used scrap wood to make support bars in the bottom of the dresser, and added the wheels underneath.  

And then I got to paint.  I have a bunch lot paint leftover from my previous shelf project, and decided it would make sense to have this new set of shelves match.  

And behold!

I wasn't sure, at first, that I'd want to reuse the same knobs this dresser had come with, but I think they actually look pretty good! 

If you look closely, you'll see the that this dresser doesn't seem to sit all the way on the floor. That's because, wheels.  It kind of miraculously fits exactly in the space between the existing shelves and the door, and I can roll it easily into the middle of the room where it's just about exactly the right height for my laptop to film my "class".