DIY Floating Shelves for $30!

I absolutely LOVE gallery walls and all the possibilities that come along with them. I, however, do not love the idea of putting a bunch of holes in the wall (especially since I change my mind often and detest filling nail holes). I found some ideas on Pinterest for using shelves to create a gallery wall. Ana White's floating shelves (featured on Young House Love) are beautiful but I wasn't sure I would be able to convince Jason to take on the project. The postcard ledges that Young House Love recently featured were closer to the project I thought we could handle but they were just a little small for holding picture frames. I found these shelves on Save It For a Rainy Day and loved the size of them, much closer to the idea I had in my head.

Luckily, Jason's dad is pretty handy, especially when it comes to woodworking so he had some ideas on how we could make exactly what I wanted without spending a ton of money. Here is what we decided to do:

The first step was deciding how many and how long we wanted the shelves to be, we had a pretty big wall in the living room to fill. We used painter's tape to plan out the shelves.

I left enough room on the height of the shelves so they could all fit an 8x10 picture frame and I left enough room under the shelves for eventually putting a bench or table on that wall.

We ended up with 6 shelves:

• 1'6"
• 2'
• 2'
• 3'
• 4'
• 4'6"

We went Lowe's to buy rough cut 2x6 boards, plus a few extra feet just in case. The hardest part was finding boards that were relatively straight. Jason cut the boards to the lengths we needed for the shelves.

Jason and his dad then routed out key hole slots in the back of the shelves for mounting. We tried to space them out so they would hit studs in the wall and ended up with 2-4 key holes depending on the size of the shelf.

They also used a router with a V-shaped bit to put a groove in the top of each shelf for frames to sit in to make sure they wouldn't fall off. Last, they used the router to round off the edges of each shelf (so they would look a little less like 2x6's hanging on the wall).

Then, I got to work on sanding each shelf with a palm sander.

 Before staining them, we put the drywall screws in the wall. To hang them, we used a level to make a straight line across the painter's tape and mark where each key hole was on the wall.

About 90% of the key holes lined up with studs. Each shelf hit at least 1 stud and the long shelves all hit at least 2. They are pretty sturdy, good for holding frames. I wouldn't recommend pulling or hanging on them (obviously).

I got to work staining the shelves. We went back and forth on either painting them black or staining them dark and finally decided on on stain since all the frames were going to be black.

I used Minwax Gel Stain in Red Elm. This stain was pretty easy to work with, especially for what we were doing. The hardest part was stirring to make sure all the chunks were out. I used a foam brush to apply, waited 24 hours between each coat, and did 3 coats to get the dark color I wanted.

The final coat took 3 days to completely dry before we were able to hang them on the wall. Then FINALLY..

I LOVE LOVE LOVE how them came out. We need to get more frames up there to fill them out but this is exactly what I was hoping for. 

Total cost of this project: $30!!

And finished just in time for the Pinterest Challenge hosted by Young House Love, Bower Power, The Remodeled Life, and Decor And The Dog.