DIY Shelves and Headboard!

What have I been up to lately? Well, just a little bit of house reno, selling a few things, building a few things... you know. When my friends were over earlier this week, they loved my new shelves and headboard! So I decided to write a little post about how I did them.

First of all, these are SUPER easy and SUPER cheap. My two shelves cost about... $30. maybe less. And that's just because I also had to buy the screws and nails. But now I have them, so the next set will be even cheaper!

First, choose what size shelves you want. 4ft? 10ft? I chose to have two 5ft shelves to not overwhelm my wall. To make it cheapest and easiest, I went to Home Depot and bought two 10ft boards (for the bottom and back of the shelves) that were 1X4s, and then one 10ft board that was a 1x2 (for the front lip). I then had the wood cutting guys (that's my construction talk) cut my boards straight in half to give me that materials for two shelves. It was free- I read that they may start charging after the 4th or 5th cut. The larger boards were $6-7 a piece, and the smaller one was $2-3. Best of all, they fit in my car! In the front seat, with the seat leaned back. Do whatcha gotta do!

 Then I took them home and started putting them together (during naptime, of course). Basically, all you have to do is put about 4 screws in the back to take the larger boards together, and then use small wood nails to tack the front lip on. My husband actually had to help because I wasn't strong enough to use the drill...
 After putting them together (and quickly), I sanded a few spots that looked rough so that there weren't splinters sticking out. Since it's on the wall, I'm not too concerned with little hands touching it and getting hurt, so just enough for good looks.

Then I used my leftover stain from my table project and applied one coat to the entire thing (except for the side that would go against the wall). The can of stain says to use a paint brush or a sponge, but I actually found it so much easier to use a cloth to get a more uniform look and not as dark of a color. Maybe I should have stained and then put them together... I don't know, I'm new at this. But it worked just fine!

We let them dry overnight, and in the morning we simply measured, leveled, found the studs in the wall, and drilled the shelves straight in! It immediately looked awesome!

Then comes the hard part... picture frames and pictures! We chose to go with a stain on our boards since our walls are a really light seafoam color, and we wanted more of a driftwood look. The picture I went off of had white shelves and all white frames- it looked awesome!

 For the headboard, we bought the same boards, but in a different size. The entire thing cost between $10-15. I measured my bed and knew that the best size to fit the bed would be 6ft. So I bought five boards six feet across, stained them, and put them on the wall the same way. Since these won't hold any weight, we only screwed them into two studs. We're tempted to go back and buy more to make the headboard stretch to the top of the windows! We'll see.

The hardest part of this project was standing in Home Depot and trying to find the straightest boards. I would pull them out, drop them on the floor to see if there was a bend in them, and put them back. A few of the boards had a slight curve, but the screws helped to straighten them out. We also wanted to try using just Command Velcro strips for the headboard, but since the wood wasn't completely flat, it wouldn't hold well. Don't settle, spend time looking for good pieces!

Well, there it is! I will probably make more shelves in the future since they were so fast, easy and cheap! Hope this helps you!