Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Tutorial: Dramatic Shelves



I wanted to post more pictures of them on here, but my camera batteries just decided to die...so only one picture unfortunatley!

I designed these shelves for a wall that needed a little something, and lucky for me, my husband could build them! I first saw something similar to these on an episode of Color Splash with David Bromstad on HGTV. I thought of how super simple they would be to make, and don't cost a lot of money AND you can make these any size you need them to be.

1. Go to Lowe's or Home Depot and buy a sheet of MDF, or medium density fiberboard (if you don't have a tool to cut up the mdf once you get it home, you can have them cut it there for you into the sized pieces you need for free). Mine are approximately 18" x 30" each. MDF costs about $18 for a 4' x 8' sheet that you will get plenty of use out of!

2. So you will need two cut pieces that are for the backing that will be against the wall (again, mine are 18" x 30"), and two pieces that are for the vases or whatever you want to sit on. Mine are approximately 18" x 10".

3. Paint every surface of the 4 cut pieces of MDF in whatever color your heart desires!

4. Take some wood glue, and adhere the two pieces together first. After you've applied the wood glue, use 1 1/2" screws with your drill gun and screw in about 5 screws on each. Pre-drilling the holes is important because it precents the MDF from splitting out. To reinforce, you can use caulking on the seam to make the shelf a little stronger. Make sure to paint over the caulking once it's dry. Once all the wood glue and caulking is dry, they are ready to hang. We screwed ours directly onto the wall, using 1 1/2" screws in the middle of the backing and then painted over it.

Obviously you can't use it to hold anything too heavy, but mine hold up the vases pretty darn well! You can do one by itself, or as many as you want. It is a great and cheap way to fill out a wall.

And p.s. my walls are NOT white! They're a light neutral because I have tons of color everywhere else!

2 comments:

  1. These are great if you have a collection of something to display- I have a collection of vintage cameras and motion picture cameras.
    I may have to think about making these- they are awesome!
    (Sorry your camera died- I hate when that happens!!)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ooh...you could do a shelf like this with staggered shelves going all the way up the backing of it to display all of the cameras! I can see it now...

    ReplyDelete