MASTER BEDROOM | WALL TO WALL PICTURE LEDGE

Jun 16

Jun 16 MASTER BEDROOM | WALL TO WALL PICTURE LEDGE

Hello All! I know It has been a while since my last post, & I am so sorry about that! You know when life gets busy ? yeah, that happened. I have also been working on getting our Etsy Decor page linked to this site so it is a little easier for you all to connect to. It is up and running now & my sister & I are pretty excited about it!! you can check it out here !

But as promised to you. this post will be a small tutorial on our floating DIY Picture shelf that we installed in our Master Bedroom a few months back! I had been picturing this shelf since we finished dry-walling our bedroom, thats when I really got a feel for the space & how much, or little, room we had in there, and a headboard for the bed just would not work. I wanted to utilize the wall as a headboard to maximize space. We started with a 3/4 High painted wall and than tackled the wall to wall Shelf! Here's where we began;

Lowes.

That's always the beginning right? I've put together a little shopping list below. There are enough materials to build a shelf up to 8 feet in length. If you want larger you will have to add additional lumber.

Materials
- 1" x 5" x 8' Finger-Joint Pine for the base of our shelf
- 1" x 3" x 8' Finger-Joint Pine for the back of our shelf
- 1" x 1" x 8' Finger-Joint Pine for the front ledge
- Box of 1-1/4" wood screws
- Wood Glue

Tools
- Drill
- Palm Sander w 180 grit sand paper
- 1/16" drill bit
- Saw (we used a mitre saw, but a skill-saw would work just fine)
- 4-5 clamps

We chose pine to match the flooring throughout the rest of our house, but also because its a good budget friendly option.

Step 1 - Sand: using a palm sander with 180 Grit paper run over your rough lumber until you get a smooth finish. It is important to sand before assembly because once you've got tight corners it will be difficult to get a perfect sand. ( yes I also sanded some of these, didn't make Steve do all the hard labour, most.. but not all :) ) Once each side of each piece was done, we wiped them down with a tact cloth to remove any excess sawdust before making our cuts, & gluing.

Step 2: Measure and Cut to Length: The wall that our bed sits on was too long for one piece of wood, so we used two lengths of lumber to make up the length. This 5" wide piece below is the shelf, I chose 5" because I wanted to be able to fit a small planter (for little cactus's ) on it. If you just want a narrow picture shelf, a 2-3" wide piece would also do the trick.

Step 3 - Glue & Screw: The assembly in this project is relatively simple. Locate a level flat surface to work on. First lay your wider pieces of pine (5") flat on the surface and let the back edge over hang your surface by at least an inch. Then arrange the 3" boards perpendicular (on the edge hanging off your flat surface) and dry fit to double check the length of your cuts. Once you're satisfied with the length of the cuts it's time to glue, pre-drill and screw. Apply a generous portion of wood glue to the underside of your 3" board and gently work the board back and forth to ensure good glue distribution; then clamp the board in place. Easy Peasy.

Before you screw it is very important that you pre-drill the holes. Pine is a soft wood and the lumber we are working with is thin (3/4"). Pre-drilling makes sure the wood won't crack when you screw. We typically put 1 screw every 12". For the type of screw I would recommend inch and a quarter wood screws.

Our final piece to get glued on was the ledge, we used a 1" x 1", just to act as a stopper for the leaning frames, we are above our bed, & a frame falling on my head would not be a fun wake up call! This piece only needed to be glued & clamped :) Remember to use a generous portion of wood glue, and gently move the wood back and forth to ensure good distribution of the glue between pieces. As we are not screwing this piece you will want to make sure that you put a clamp roughly every 16" and allow enough time for the glue to properly set (your wood glue will say on the label how long you need to wait it is typically 30 minutes to an hour).

Step 4 - Wood Fill & Finish Sand: Remember when we had to piece together our wood to make up the length of the wall, well, these cracks now need to be filled. We chose a light wood colour filler, as we planned to keep the shelf raw wood. If you are planning to stain the wood, I would try some testers first to match your stain.

Once all of our wood fill was dry as per the instructions, we gave the entire shelf a final sand to smooth out any imperfections, as well as the new fill. Finally, it was ready to be hung!! crossing our fingers that all our measurements were correct ( we tend to make these mistakes often for some reason :P ). Level the shelf on your wall, Again pre-drill those holes, couple screws in those studs and your laughin'! you've got yourself a shelf!