Palebear HQ Gets New CD Shelves

Apologies for the lack of actual music updates. One thing you gotta remember about Palebear is that it’s a combination personal and music review blog. I did this just because - I could do it. After all there’s no money or glory in music reviewing (unless you are Bitchfork or you offer free music MP3s that you’re posting psuedo-illegally in order to get people to come to your music site, but I won’t get into that)… so why not have fun with the blog?

Here’s actually the major reason I haven’t been posting lately. For years, I’ve wanted some way to store all my CDs. The problem is that all the pre-made IKEA and Target shelves assume that you have at most 300 CDs - if that many at all.

Not me. I have at least 1500 albums on CD and other format that I bought with my own money (or received them as promotionals). There is absolutely no place to store this plethora of CDs, cassette tapes and records, and having actually been born before physical music went out of fashion (all you younguns…) I’m really not into the idea of burning all of those CDs and selling them back. They currently have taken over the house… and more come in every day because of this music reviewing “gig”.

So, I decided to make some of my own. First off, I genuinely doff my cap to all the furniture makers out there. Making your own furniture is hell of difficult. All the pics on this page are of the CD shelf plus bookcase that I just finished today. I actually bought and cut all the wood, built the custom cases and shelves, hand-drilled and countersank the screw holes, cut and installed the backing for the shelves and balanced the damn thing. The one concession I did make was to buy some “pre-finished” wood that is basically 3/4 inch particle board with a finish. I just didn’t feel like sanding and staining that much wood - I just got through with another project where we stained the wood and it was a real bitch.

The thing is - it looks just like IKEA! I’m not too disappointed though… because they just did not have a sturdy wooden combo unit that would hold all my music and that fit into the space between my window and the closet door exactly. I think that I probably could’ve gotten away with finding two shorter bookcases and somehow topping them with several CD shelf units. But I just love to drive myself insane with these home projects. It took forever and I made some mistakes along the way, but I think it’ll be worth it once we move in all the CDs and albums.

I know a lot of people are going to laugh at my musical de-evolution while patting their wallet sized 160 Gb Seagate external USB hard drive that holds all their music. Well, I do have a considerable amount of my CDs ripped to MP3 as well. But I’ll never give up the hard copy ghost and switch 100% over to digital. Never, never.

By the way, I’m somewhat disappointed that my new shelves only hold only 1300 CDs. This means I might have to downsize a bit. Or build another shelf in the bedroom…

by Palebear