Sorry for all the bad info you were given and the wasted $$$ it has cost you and now the many problems you'll have to deal with. Is the Garden Soil a bad idea in containers? Definitely. It compacts badly, drains poorly and leads to plant root rot. Thus the warning on the bag. You'll find many discussions about the other problems it causes over on the Growing Tomatoes forum and the Container Gardening forum here. You'll also find many discussions there about all the issues of trying to grow upside down. It is a passing fad at best and a bad one. While the Celebrity 'might' do ok in a proper sized container of 10-12 gallons and right side up and the Big Beef will need a container of at least a 12-15 gallons for success, the Sun Gold is a HUGE plant - by far the biggest of the varieties you have as it often reaches 4-5' in width and 8-10' tall. It seldom does well in even a 1/2 whiskey barrel sized container without a great deal of extra work and care and feeding. Next year stick with varieties that are bred specifically for growing in containers. There are many of them available. Your plants are young enough and small enough that they can still be transplanted into a proper container mix and proper containers and do well IF you want to invest the money in making the needed changes. Good luck. Dave

Our niche has 2 glass shelves. The glass is 4 inches deep and 24 1/2 long.. 1/4 inch thick and tempered. The tempering part is so that if it does happen to break, it will break like a car windshield; hundreds of pebble sized pieces, no shards. When I went to my local glass store to place the order, the owner was there.. 3rd generation glass and mirror guy.. he said the only support we would need for the 24 1/2 length would be at the ends. The tile ends rest on a tile.. the shelf blends right in with the surrounding grout line. We chose glass because we set a waterproof LED light in the top of the niche, it shines down through everything and looks pretty cool at 3am when you're washing off the day's dirtiness.

1. Sheetrock the entire niche and front face There's no reason to sheetrock the inside of the niche if you plan to insert a box made by your cabinetmaker. 2. Have my cabinet maker build a "box" that I insert into the sheetrocked niche. The box should be smaller than your framed rough opening, and shimmed into exact position during installation, much like a door or window. 4. Add shelves. I would have the cabinetmaker prepare the way for shelves by either making them integral to the box, drilling adjustable shelf support pin holes or letting in some metal support strips. ...beadboard or paneling ... I'd probably have the cabinetmaker use beadboard paneling for only the back panel of the box. If you want to use it on the sides, it might be better to use a solid wood product instead of the paneling. ...do I need to use a "box"... No, you don't need to use a box but the result is likely to be much rougher. If you drywall the inside of the opening then its surfaces will not be flat and square, so fitting the shelves will be much more difficult. Supporting the shelves would probably require ledger strips screwed through the drywall into the framing, with the shelves sitting on top. There'd also be no reason to apply any trim around the opening. I'd stick with plan A. ...in the picture, the shelves look so cleanly attached. No cleats/pins means the shelves are not adjustable. There's more than one way to skin that cat, but I'd guess they were nailed into the box before it was installed in the wall.

wait a minnit--how heavy is an audio-visual receiver? Not THAT heavy, is it? I don't think you need to add the plywood (which will eat up 1.5 inches of space!) for this--I think that's overkill. If you give EACH piece of equipment its OWN shelf, and don't stack them up, how much are you holding? My receiver isn't that heavy. Can you weigh yours? They make drywall anchors rated for some pretty big poundage--they ought to work just fine. Round way up, for safety's sake. And, as I mentioned, don't stack them all on a single shelf. If you want to pass wires from top to bottom in the back, get a hole saw, and cut a hole through the back of the shelf. Esp. coupled w/ the front being screwed right into the studs, they shouldn't fail. If you're worried anyway, or if you think that TOO many holes will weaken its holding power, you might just put a 2x2 in each corner, and attach to floor and ceiling, so it doesn't wobble; if this is *sitting* on the floor, and shelves are anchored to it, they'll stay up. (also, most of what you do in the back can be hidden again by the shelves themselves; you could try to access the drywall that frames the niche, even if it's messy) You don't need support across the back, not w/ 18" wide, at 3/4 inch. It won't sag. Just support at the corners. (or the back wall itself, IN the corners--is there NO framing accessible in the back at ALL? The drywall itself has to be attached to SOMETHING) For the shelves, you could just get plywood cut to fit (trim the front edge w/ iron-on edge banding, ask at the lumberyard). To hold it up, set it on either 2-inch metal L brackets (upside down). Of course, the L brackets will be pretty low profile, but they will show. I wonder if you could simply set them on the screws (use extra-long ones, so they'll stick out a bit AFTER they've gone all the way through the drywall anchor). If you don't leave TOO much sticking out--just enough to grab--maybe they won't bend. If you use the screws, and have a router, you could gouge a tiny notch in the bottom of the shelf (use a thicker board, then) for the screw to sink into. Maybe there's a bolt w/a screw end you could use--you might ask at the hardware store.