Shelfish

Last week I mentioned that we might do some art over the dryer at some point. We may still do that, but it is looking much less bare these days thanks to a quick little shelf project we whipped up. We started out with some L brackets and a 4 foot pine board that we picked up at Lowes for $9.63.

We measured how long we wanted the shelves to be to fit perfectly in the corner. Then two quick cuts with a skill saw later we had this.

We also had a shorter piece of board left over, who knows, it may become a shelf somewhere else someday too. Next I primed and painted the boards (which you can see some in the above picture since I forgot to take a pic before I started priming). We decided to go with white shelves to match the trim in the room since we want them to look nice, but still kind of blend in with the rest of the room.

I started out painting one side and the edges, then waited for it to dry, which only took about 10 minutes since it was a hot day, and flipped them to paint the other side. I did one coat of primer and two thin, even coats of paint to get them looking nice.

 

Now all we had to do was hang them up. Jake used a level to line the L brackets up so that the shelves would sit on them nice and straight, then he just screwed them into the wall.

Jake also secured the shelves to the L brackets using screws. I'll probably go over the heads of the screws with a little white paint at some point to make them a little less noticeable, but for now I'm really loving what those shelves have done for the corner. As a refresher, here's what it looked like before. 

And here's how it looks with the newly added shelves. 

 

I love how cute they look and all that added function that they provide to the laundry area. And since we already had the primer, paint and screws on hand, the entire cost for the shelves was only the $9.63 we paid for the brackets and board! Gotta love an inexpensive, functional and cute fix! 

Anyone else made any simple improvements that you didn't realize how much you would love until you finished it? I know every time I walk in the back door I look up in that corner and smile now.