Last night we hemmed and hawed for a while, trying to decide what game to play next after a round of Royal Turf ("Go, Nougat!"). Finally I decided we should play a game of Bohnanza with the High Bohn expansion, which I rank as the best expansion ever made for any game, ever. All of my Bohnanza products were stacked on a wall shelf. There are a lot of them these days, and they were wedged in pretty tightly. High Bohn wouldn't slip free. I gave it a tug, then braced my hand against the rest of the stack and tugged again.
Bad move.
The entire shelving rack pulled out of the wall, toppling about 150 medium- and small-box games onto me and the floor. I caught a shelf in the face, and stood holding a couple of shelves aloft until guests could rescue me. Amazingly, only a half dozen or so games spilled their contents. My Knightmare Chess and Knightmare Chess 2 sets are now hopelessly intermingled. King of the Elves, a game I abandoned long ago but never bothered to trade away, mocked me by spewing its coins and chits everywhere. Money from Ravensburger's edition of Last Chance scattered. A cheap chess set dumped its pieces all over. Other than that, everything else stayed more or less intact.
So it turned out our next game was a giant round of 52 pick up, as we resorted pieces and stacked games on the table. The shelves had held for over eleven years. The lesson for when we put them back up? Dry-wall screws. And perhaps it's time to get rid of some of the games on these shelves that I never play.
Posted by Peter at June 1, 2005 10:54 AMCrap. Six.
Posted by: Dug Steen on June 1, 2005 11:29 AMI have just (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,..) seven words for you:
Rhonda and Demetri Roubanis: Closet Specialists.
It's way past time to bring in the experts.
Posted by: Dug Steen on June 1, 2005 11:32 AMPeter, I am so sad I missed this moment. I've been thinking this very thing would happen any day now for quite some time. My version had a game tumbling onto the torchiere lamp nearby and spontaneously bursting into plastic-coated-card-flames.
My suggestion: put in that motorized shelving system I suggested years ago, where, with the press of a button, you could move a rack of games up and down out of their climate controlled valut in the basement.
Or maybe you should just mount a cabinet. Things have a hard time falling through cabinet walls.
Posted by: Jason on June 1, 2005 11:36 AMPlease forgive me for giggling; I wouldn't've been able to stop myself from shouting "Jenga!" had I been there and I doubt I'm the only one. All the same, I'm glad that you're OK and so little damage was done.
Mostly I'm jealous that you own so many games that it's this sort of a problem!
Posted by: Chris M. Dickson on June 1, 2005 02:47 PMWhere are the pictures? It was a glorious site, people, and pictures were taken.
Posted by: Nathan Beeler on June 2, 2005 10:06 AMCrap. Sight.
Posted by: Nathan Beeler on June 2, 2005 10:12 AMPictures! Pictures! I want to see the pictures!
(On a side note-- StaticZombie seems to have some kind of time-warp capability. You'll notice above that I managed to post a correction to a comment before the comment itself. In my time-line at least cause preceded effect, but in the StaticZombie comment time-line effect seems to have preceded cause. Spooky.)
Posted by: Dug Steen on June 3, 2005 08:55 AMI think it's wonderful. By itself, "Crap. Six." is a remarkably absurd response to Peter's post. In fact, just as soon as I can learn to sing or play an instrument, I'm going to name my first band "Crap Six" (though, there should be fewer than six members to confuse people). Or maybe it'll be Albino Bandwagon - a phrase that came up in conversation at game night this week. Any nameless groups out there need a tambourine player?
Posted by: Nathan Beeler on June 3, 2005 10:08 AMWow, that could have been me taking a shelf in the face. In fact, what were you doing on that side of the room? Don't you have us minions to get the games off the shelves for you? Or is that just me? Oh, I get it. It is.
Posted by: Mark L on June 4, 2005 10:10 AMMark - When I've been retelling the story - I always include the fact that Peter hasn't actually pulled a game off the shelf for game night in approximately 15 months. And boy were we all glad that this was the time he opted to.
Michael
Posted by: michael on June 5, 2005 09:38 PMI'd just like to mention that drywall screws are not good for holding up a shelf. Drywall screws are for holding drywall to studs.
The best way to hold up a shelf is by using good long screws into the studs, using a stud finder. If that's not possible, expansion bolts (especially Molly Bolts) are best. Scru-n-grip are also pretty good.
Posted by: Don on June 7, 2005 11:27 AMOr, if the shelf isn't all that heavy, just use some of those plastic anchors - they go in the wall, then the screws go in them. They are cheap and a bit easier to use than expansion bolts. I used anhors for my DVD shelf and have never had any trouble.
Going for studs is certainly the best way, but it my case it wasn't an option as there aren't any where my shelf is.
Posted by: larry on June 8, 2005 05:10 AM