My Kingdom for a Stud Finder

The garage has a very high ceiling, so for the first time we think we could make good use of one of those shelf things you can store stuff near the ceiling. We ordered it and were very excited to install it. Ganesh unpacked the boxes and I was watching the baby so I couldn't help him. Two hours later he came in the house and said, "I give up, I can't find the studs." I found that hard to believe...what do you mean you can't find the studs? We have a stud finder after all. I went in there and spent 2 hours and came up with the same conclusion. So my dad and I tried and 8 hours later we still couldn't figure out a place to put the wrack.  (How many college degrees does it take to install a ceiling wrack?...sounds like the beginning to some joke.) We could not get our stud finder to get a reliable reading, I guess because the sheetrock was so thick or something, it seems to work well inside the house for hanging pictures. 

We considered returning it...but it's very heavy and we threw the box away already, it was in bad shape anyway. But we just couldn't let this stupid thing defeat us. We will not be defeated by a shelf! How does that bode for us wanting to build the basement ourselves? It does not bode well. We will not go quietly into that good night!

So my dad came up with a work-around. he had a really strong magnet on a handle, so we would slide that around the ceiling and sometimes it would get stuck. We realized it was attaching to the nails in the boards behind the sheetrock. So that told us where the nails were, and nails can't just be floating in space, they are usually in a board, so that was the turning point. We could actually find studs. 

But then we had another issue, the studs weren't where we needed them to be. The issue was, we would find a stud or two, but then the distance of the wrack, and where we needed the other studs to be to install the other mounts, there wasn't anything there. And we just couldn't figure out a way to get our stud finder to work consistently. And of course it was painfully slow since we would climb up the 10 ft ladder, slide the finder around within the reachable area, then have to climb down and move the ladder, climb up, slide it around, etc. Over nearly every inch of the ceiling. The place we wanted to put it, we couldn't because of the studs or lack thereof. So then we started searching for another place to put it. It was really hard...I can't even tell you how hard it was.  

After several days of working on it, we finally installed it. It's the perfect place for keeping empty suitcases and such. Sheesh! 

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