No One Has Ever Pulled Themselves Up By Their Own Bootstraps

Some 30 years ago my wife and I considered ourselves the kind of people who would have a wine cellar. We were motivated in no small part by the fact that we'd just purchased a home with your classic cool, dark basement, ignoring the fact that I don't drink wine and she sticks almost exclusively to a few brands of chardonnay. Since there were already shelves built into the space, I ran out and purchased a classic Ikea do-it-yourself "system," which we filled, over years, with bottles of wine people gave us as gifts and that we would likely never drink.Fortunately, I work in a profession in which nothing need ever go to waste, so when we moved out of that house, the wine rack parts found their way to the preschool where they served as a building set.The system is simple: hexagonal prisms that are about a foot long with each end drilled with four holes into which wooden pegs fit. They can be inserted by hand, but we like to use rubber mallets at the work bench. It's an imperfect system,…