By Heather Posted on

Budget Friendly Shelving

Square

We recently moved into what we like to call our “tiny” house. In reality our home doesn’t qualify as a real tiny house at just over 1000sqft, but compared to our old house at 3000+sqft, this little guy feels pretty tiny to us. I had originally planned to DIY some nice built-in media cabinets onto our central living room wall, but once we moved our big sectional into the space it became pretty clear we were going to need something more minimal. Throw in the fact that we had a whole bunch of lumber around the property just waiting to be discovered and reclaimed, we ended up with these rustic shelves.

 

After I found the boards that I liked, which happened to be old weathered 2×8’s, I gave them a good sanding. I didn’t want to completely strip them of their character, but I also didn’t want any lichen growing in my living room. I also cut them to size which ended up being 8 ft for the long shelves and about 3 1/2 ft for the little shelves.

 

I wanted my two lowest shelves to be a little wider to accommodate for kids toy and book storage. To do this, I used my Skil Saw to cut 3 inch strips out of one 2×8 board. Then I used my Kreg jig to attach the strips to my boards. Once I connected the boards I gave then a seal with satin water based polyurethane.

 

For the brackets, I purchased large corner braces from my local building supply store. The brackets I originally wanted were over $6.00 each so I cruised the hardware section and came across these guys at $2.75 each. The braces were originally silver so I gave them a coat of matte black spray paint to get the look I wanted. I also had to grab some black screws, but even with the extra supplies I saved over $52.00.

 

When I was ready to hang the brackets, I used my level to make lines on the wall about where I knew the studs would be. Then I went along the wall with my stud finder and crossed my level line to mark exactly where the brackets should go.

 

After I hung all of my brackets, I was ready to bring in my shelves. Then all I had to do was screw the shelves into the brackets from underneath to secure them.

 

You may notice in the picture that I used smaller brackets on the shorter shelves. I don’t know exactly why I chose to do this, but I will be going and getting larger ones to replace them. Now all that’s left is to find some storage baskets that I love, and get these babies decorated.