Building greenhouse shelving: staining and installing

Over the weekend I continued work on the greenhouse shelving project.  (See the first and second posts, if you missed them.)

But first, during the week I ordered a new interlocking rubber mat for the floor, and added that when it arrived:

It nicely covers all of the exposed floor space (the part where the stool is will have the sink above it). It came with four 3×3’ portions, but I only needed two here; I’ll probably use the other two in the workshop.

Here’s a closeup of the mat:

I originally wasn’t going to paint or stain the shelves, figuring they’d be fine, but realized that they’ll be exposed to a lot of moisture, so could grow mold (and rot, but I wasn’t so worried about that). So I decided to stain them. They do look nicer stained, too.

Here I’m staining the back posts; they are attached at the bottom, so I’m just leaning them forward to stain behind:

Staining the right posts:

Then I started staining the shelves, doing the bottom and sides of each shelf with it leaning vertically:

I then placed the shelf in position, screwed it to the supports, then stained the top:

I figured that it’d be easier to install each shelf as I go, to make it easier to reach the screws. And leaving the top till after installation would avoid too much handling wet stain.

Two shelves done:

For the next shelf, I added a support for the sink; it will be held up on the right side by this L-shaped bracket below the shelf:

The back and left side of the sink will be supported by these L-shaped boards (and the others will be used elsewhere); I’ll add them next weekend:

The back shelves installed; four 2×6’ shelves, and a small shelf above the power strip:

The bottom-right shelf installed:

All four right shelves installed; three 2×6’ shelves (actually a couple of inches wider and shallower than the back ones, to give more floor space), and one shallower one (about 10” deep), enabling the second-from-top shelf to be used as an extra workbench if needed:

The shelves only have one coat of stain at present. I will probably give them a second coat next weekend.

Here’s a wide-angle view of all of the shelves:

Next weekend I’ll give the shelves a second coat, and install the sink.