The bathroom is another problem, and the more so when it is very up-to-date, with lots of tile and no place to put anything, except a "medicine cabinet," designed, one would say, to hold two razor blades and nothing much else. Of course, a lot of shelving in a bathroom doesn't look very tidy, though a few three-inch ones in certain spots are very convenient. And there are all the nifty little glass and porcelain shelves you can get in the department stores, with neat little nickel-plated brackets to rest them on. The catch in this, though, is what to fasten the little brackets to-and here you often have to resort to putting in a strip of wood, (to be white-enameled) as something into which to put the bracket-screws.

In many bathrooms (especially in small apartments) you often wish there were a wide storage shelf, quite high up and more or less out of sight. If the bottom side of it is painted or enameled the same as the walls, you don't notice it much, and lots of things can be put up on it in shelf-boxes. If you feel the need of such a shelf, put one up. To avoid, as you generally try to do, the expense of very wide lumber, make it of three 3/4"x 3" strips, spaced apart.

It is in the unmodern bathroom of the remodeled studio-apartment, or in the old house in the country that the shelf-builder can really make merry. A little carpenter work and a quart of white enamel will make the bathroom vastly more attractive and convenient.

If there is no built-in medicine cabinet, it is always a problem to get the detached one put up securely enough so that the weight of the mirror door when open (not to speak of the contents) won't pull it off the wall with cataclysmic results. To show how this problem was met with a little carpenter work and a few feet of 3/4"x 3", we offer a sketch of the whole end of a bathroom once seen and duly noted. It looked very neat, and very, very convenient. It was in an old New York house which was equipped with nothing whatsoever in the bathroom on which you could place so much as a cake of soap.

Three inch wide shelves built to give support to a medicine cabinet. (Done in an old house.)

Now, as a final suggestion on building shelves, here's a way of building good-looking ones for places where they are more or less exposed to view. They may be built, of course, just like our original bookshelves, but just to show we know another trick or two, let's order some good-grade 1 1/2"x 1 1/2" sticks and a little %"x 8" shelving. Notch out the shelf boards at each corner, with cuts 11/2"x11/2" (easy enough to do, but they must be cut accurately') and rest these on heavy screw-eyes put in the positions indicated in the sketch. Or the shelves may rest on 3/4"x z" cleats, set between the posts, if you feel equal to driving z" finishing nails right through the11/2" posts for a 1/2* hold in the ends of the shelf. These corners in such a case, would be stronger if glued, and you would almost be building a piece of furniture. Further rigidity, of course, could be given it if it were backed up with a piece of plywood or masonite. This would be doubly desirable if the shelves were free-standing, not fastened against a wall.

A standing bookshelf built with square corner posts.

The whole point about shelves is that you don't need to wish there were shelves in various spots about your abode. The simplest shelf in the world never sprouted out of a wall because you wished there were a shelf there. If it would be convenient to have a shelf, or shelves all over the place-build them.

One thing not mentioned so far-but important. Shelves, whether singly or in lots, must be level, or they look absolutely depraved. Of course the proper way to get shelves level is with a spirit-level, as carpenters do-but if you haven't one, and don't want to get one, pause long enough in the mad rush to get the shelves up to do a little measuring, up from the floor (assuming it to be level) and make level-marks. In old houses floors are all too likely to be off-level. If you put a golf ball or a marble on the shelf and hold it in such a position that the ball or marble doesn't roll off, your shelf will be so nearly level that the eye couldn't detect any slant. Of course you can see that it is slanting an inch or so after it is up (and so can your more critical friends) but the time to think of this is before it is put up.

And one more parting warning-make your shelves a little stronger, a little more secure than may seem strictly necessary. It can do no harm, the opposite condition can. You don't need to swing your entire weight on a shelf, but bear down on the outer edge of it fairly hard to make certain the cleats, brackets or other supports are going to hold.