Nursery Shelves

I know, I know. You've been waiting with bated breath for the update.

After priming and painting, the next project on our list was to build some basic shelves for the room.

The bedroom we've chosen for our nursery has a slightly odd shape. For the most part, it's a standard rectangle. But there's a little spot in one corner that connects it to our bedroom. A pass-through area, which I'm sure will come in handy for middle-of-the-night feedings.

In this corner are two doors. One leading to our room, one for an over-the-stairs closet. This leaves a nice amount of wall space, but no room for furniture.

We're all for maximizing storage spots around here, especially in a smallish nursery. So awhile ago I dreampt up the idea to add shallow shelves to the wall. I knew they could only be a couple of inches deep, or otherwise I'd make the pass-through spot too narrow.

Shallow shelves are perfect, in my opinion, for a couple of reasons:
1. They fit in a tight spot. Without them, the wall is wasted space.

2. They're great for displaying books face-out. It'll be fun for our nugget to someday get to see a variety of her favorite book covers at a glance, as opposed to just the spines of books on a traditional bookshelf.

3. They make for a nice visual for an otherwise blank wall. No artwork/photographs/etc needed! The shelves and books are they're own artwork, of sorts.

4. They're flexible. In the future, when our nugget is 10 and doesn't want to display Dr. Suess anymore, we could use the shelves for framed artwork, family pictures, or any kind of knick-knack she might be into at the time.

So where does one find such shelves? Keep in mind they need a little lip on the front so that face-out books stay in place. We didn't know where to even start looking for them. So we just made 'em ourselves. DIY all the way, baby!

We bought wood, wood glue, wall anchors, screws, and clamps at Lowe's. I think they worked out to cost us $6-$8 per shelf. Not too shabby.

Each shelf consists of 4 different pieces of wood, but YAY they happened to already be cut into the length we wanted - 3 ft.

Piece 1: 3 1/2 x 1/2 inch
Piece 2: 3/8 x 3/8 inch dowel
Pieces 3 & 4: 5/8 x 5/8 inch dowel

Piece 1 was the actual shelf part, Piece 2 was the lip, and Pieces 3 and 4 were to be used to secure the shelf to the wall (one on top of the shelf, one on bottom). We used wood glue and clamps to put them all together, and then drilled a screw through Pieces 3, 1, and 4 along the back of the shelf for extra support.

They then got sanded, painted, and hung! We used screws and wall anchors to get 'em good and secure. I also ran a bead of painter's caulk around the edges of the shelves because not all of them were completely flush with the wall.

Next step: touch-ups! I also painted the screw heads white in hopes that they'd just blend in. Oh, and then added some books.

And now?

Josh's parents kept a lot of the books he read as a child, and they brought them to us a few months back. Love it!

And our project for this weekend? Furniture.