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In total I bought five Lack shelves from IKEA. One was to go in the tv nook area, two were to be used to hold the alcohol in the ‘bar’ section of the ‘lounge’ area, and the remaining two were attached to each wall in the ‘bedroom’ area of the room.

My dad had this history of doing things ‘just good enough’ or otherwise as I would put it, quarter-assed. Back in the eighties when he transformed that room from a garage into a ‘family’ room he put cheapo wood-look panelling up on the walls. Now the room wasn’t ever particularly finished when it was built, just a standard garage, sheetrock on the ‘house’ side and bare concrete block on all other walls. I was too young to remember it actually being done, but I remember it being a garage, so it happened sometime in the blacked out memory of youth. He did a fairly good job when he transformed the laundry room from its unfinished state into what was at first a family room, but then became an office, which ultimately turned into a giant dumpster. I sort of assumed (whoops!) that he put some amount of care into the room in question. I was dreadfully wrong.

There seems to be a real flux in regards to the spacing of studs throughout this house… every now and then you find the traditional 16″ on center, but most of the time it’s something else, much greater a distance and a distance that I question the legality of. It’s no wonder that the company that built this house has long been out of business.

So back downstairs, I really struggled to attach the two shelves in the bedroom area. As anyone familiar with Lack shelving knows, it’s an “invisible hardware” style shelf that uses 10 screws in strategic locations to attach this bar with two large “prongs” that go into the shelf. I started to notice that the studs down there were more like FOUR FEET on center! If you push on the panelling it bulges! Studs were only placed on the edges of the panelling so that it could be attached. So, basically these shelves are held up by a prayer…. thankfully they were not intended to hold anything of any weight, just a few candles really.

Fastforward to me attaching the bar shelving. Same situation, no studs… I used very long screws hoping that somehow I’d go through the void into the drywall and actually hit a stud back there…. no such luck. All ten screws for the first shelf landed only in the void. Even with ten screws, simply squished into the drywall and open area just will not cut it. I put the shelf on the prongs, pressed down gently and the shelf started to slant…. and stayed that way.

So yeah, that’s a bust. I think I’ll put the two remaning shelves over the closet area; there SHOULD be a stud across the opening where the door is, otherwise there’d be nothing to attach the track of the door to.

I’m thinking perhaps going with the same heavy-duty shelving solution I used up here for the laser printer and networking gear… A four feet span is less than desirable, but it’s quite a bit better than screws into open air behind panelling! This also means though that I’ll need to invest more money, which means I’ll need to postpone that aspect of the room for a while.