After our inaugural trip in Peggy Hill, we noticed that we could benefit from some more counter space, for storage in particular. Get a few boozehounds in there and the bottles start to stack up pretty quickly! With so much real estate on the backsplash over the stove, I decided some shelves would be nice to help get things off of the counter.
I dug around the garage and made a Sunday project out of designing some super simple shelves with some found scrap wood. The goal was to make some shelves without spending any money. And to reduce, reuse, and recycle baby!
I happened to have some varying boards, but I also wanted the top shelf to be smaller since the plan was to put some spice jars on the top shelf and bigger things like wine bottles and paper towels on the bottom shelf. For the sides of each shelf, I cut two equal pieces, the smaller set at 3″ and the other larger one at 5″, and one long piece at 18″ for each front.
The corners were attached using butt joints with wood glue. I am okay with a more rustic look on these so don’t mind the less than perfect wood or less than perfect quality.
I attached a bottom to them which was some rigid corrugated plastic sign material leftover from some garage sale signs that I stapled to the frame. Designer tip! Don’t do that! It turned out to be a bad idea because it was not sturdy enough and sagged pretty quickly with some weight on it. No crash, but not strong for sure. OOPS!
The garage sale sign bottoms were replaced with some 1/4″ thick trim wood I got at the HD and cut to the right length. So much for my free project! Ha, they never are around here! I attached them to the wall using some L brackets so hopefully, they are sturdy and well supported now.
I found some cutie little spice jars from World Market for the top shelf and have enough room on the bottom for a roll of paper towels, my vintage cracker can of cooking utensils, and room still for a couple of bottles…wine or other! I am quite proud of the way they turned out. Now I just hope they don’t fall apart or fall down!
The basic butt joint construction used on these shelves is one of the simplest since it merely involves cutting the wood to the right length and butting them together. I used this same basic technique, but with wider boards and some nails, to make benches for a clubhouse I had in the 6th grade! So easy! Just keep in mind that it is not the strongest joint, so depending on your situation you may need to brace it or add additional support.
In fact, this same construction was used for the valance I made for the window treatment in my master bedroom. Using that same butt joint technique to assemble the valance board, I then covered it in padding and stapled my fabric onto it. So simple to do.
Who else has used this method to build something special?