The Nursery: DIY Reclaimed Barnwood Shelves

So far we have completed the board & batten wall, painted, & installed some star decals on the ceiling.  Next up - some DIY shelving for the space between the board & batten wall and the window.  

Our first step was using some painters tape to get an idea of the shelf length & placement.  We decided on three 3' long staggered shelves:

Our plan was to combine natural wood shelves with some sort of metal brackets.

We had originally contemplated installing shelves like these, but the cost for the piping, wood, stain, & spray paint would have been around $100 - which was a tad more than we wanted to spend.

Luckily, we found another bracket option while we were @ IKEA: 7.5" deep EKBY BJARNUM brackets:

(FYI: the brackets do not come with hardware to attach them to the wall itself)

Our next step was to buy some basic boards @ the home improvement store & stain them ourselves.  We needed lumber that was 1" thick & 7.5" wide to fit the brackets, however, boards today are not true to their listed dimensions in regards to their thickness & width.

For example, a board that is listed as a 1" x 6" x 8' board is actually .75" thick x 5.5" wide x 8' long.  That meant that we could not buy a standard board that would fit snugly in the 1" thick brackets (you could use wooden stair treads, but they are pricey).  Here's an example of how the shelves would have looked using the store bought .75" thick boards - you can see there's a slight gap showing...

Unfortunately, the gap bothered us, so we decided to try & find some old reclaimed barn wood, which would actually be 1" thick.

Mel checked out Craigslist & found a seller who offered a variety of old barn wood boards for $3/linear foot.  We needed a board that was @ least 9 ft long so we could cut out three 3' shelves.  After sifting through a pile of boards, we found the perfect board for our project (we think it's poplar):

Once we got the board home, we rubbed it down with a wire brush to remove any loose debris & dirt.  Then we sprayed the board down with the hose & left it in the sun for the day:

Once dry, we laid it across a couple of chairs (when you don't have any saw horses available), measured out our three 3' long sections, & cut them down with a circular saw:

Once the 3 boards were cut, we checked the fit of the brackets to the boards & found that only one of the boards was just a hair wider than the 7.5" bracket.  We had to rip it down slightly with the table saw:

Next, we lightly hammered the brackets onto the boards using a rubber mallet:

Luckily, all of the boards fit nice & snug into the brackets:

We installed the shelves using wall anchors (we only ran into a stud for one bracket):

You can even see the curved marks from the old circular saw:

Our cost for each shelf was about $14 - $3/linear foot for 9 ft of barn wood board + 3 pairs of 7.5" brackets @ $5.00 each (IKEA website lists the price as $7, but we paid $5).

We really like the look of the finished product & also that we could use something reclaimed & make it new!

More nursery projects coming soon...

Mel & Nader
:)