easy cheap DIY shelves

Ok. Mudroom and laundry room are checked off, it’s time to head downstairs and start on my oldest boy’s room. We began last spring and painted his desk and hung the map, but then we were trying to decide on how to finish everything and it kind of got pushed to the back burner. So now we’re back!! He wanted some shelves to display some of his favorite things so this is what we came up with:

Decide how many shelves and how long you want them to be. Go to your local home store (we went to Home Depot) and pick up a 12 ft pine board for $16. We were going to do 3 shelves, so we had them cut them (they will do it for free, but I find going in on a weekday is best since the weekend tend to be very busy) into 3 equal pieces.

Sand the corners if you want to, and then apply stain.


We made a combo stain of weathered gray and early american. I just practiced on the underside of the bottom shelf until it looked right.

I just take a pair of mismatched gloves and an old rag to wipe on the stain and go to town.






Then, we just took inexpensive, industrial looking brackets and mounted them to the studs in the wall with small screws. We decided to only do 2 shelves, but found another use for the extra board…working on that!



Then, just add your treasures to be displayed, and there you go!



After gathering your supplies, you could easily whip these out in a hour (not including drying time) and our total was under $30 including the stain. Yay for easy, fast projects!