Yes, I know it’s 2024 and the title of this blog post is “Fall ’23 ORC” and that is because I’m way behind on updating you all on this project. I’m doing my best to get caught up even if it’s after the fact so here we go! Better late than never, right?
Ok so where were we…right! Floating shelves!
Up until this point, I’ve cleared out the laundry room and installed new baseboards and the frames for floating shelves. See the previous post on how I made the frames for these custom shelves. Now for the actual shelf part! My plan was to try something new and cut a fancy mitered edge, but because I was using 1/2″ plywood, the table saw wasn’t cutting it. Pun intended. If I had used 3’4″ plywood or solid wood it would have worked fine. But I learned the hard way! I’m still new to using the table saw so still figuring out what I can and can not do. Apparently cutting a huge piece of thin plywood at an angle is a no go. So I had to pivot and cut everything flat instead. Luckily I cut everything big on purpose in case I made a mistake, so there was enough to salvage everything. I’ve made floating shelves like this before but wanted to try something different. Maybe next time!
After cutting all the pieces, I dry fit them in the laundry room. I’m going to stain and paint wash them before assembling them. They will be assembled in the laundry room with wood glue and brad nails. Basically it’s like a sandwich, the top of the shelf goes on top of the bracket, the bottom of the shelf goes under the bracket and the front face closes it up to make it look like a thick shelf.
I wanted a white oak look for these shelves but didn’t want to spend the money on actual white oak. So instead I’m using sanded 1/2″ plywood and will be doing a paint wash technique to get the look we’re going for. I did this once before on some floating shelves I made for a friend and it came out pretty good so we’re going to do the same process.
After cutting all of the pieces for the shelves, I pre-stained them and stained them wish Special Walnut. I did a pretty sloppy job with the stain because I knew I was going to paint wash over it so it didn’t matter. If it was just going to be stained, I would have sanded them down to a finer grit and then do a more careful stain application.
The paint wash will go over the stain once it’s dry. What is a paint wash? It’s really just watered down paint! I picked out a paint color (I chose “Best Beige” by PPG 1085-4) and then diluted the paint with water by a 1:1 ratio (equal parts paint and water). You can dilute it more or less depending on how opaque you want the finish to be. I wanted to still see the wood grain through the paint and the 1:1 ratio was perfect. Make sure you stir it up really good once you mix in the water and then paint it on with a brush or a high density roller. I started with a roller and then switched to a brush because I felt like I had more control over the thickness of the paint and how much of the wood grain would show through.
After I was satisfied with the paint wash, I ended up doing two coats, I sealed the shelves with two coats of polyurethane. The poly is easy to apply with a foam roller and you can re-coat every two hours. Once they were completely dry they were ready to install. They look great! Too bad the rest of the room doesn’t but it will once I’m done. Wallpaper is next!
And before you tell me that my shelves are crooked, I can assure you they are perfectly level. What is NOT level is the ceiling. The difference in height between the left and right sides of the laundry room are off by almost two inches! So yes, it looks crooked because of the ceiling, but I figured having level shelves was way more important so stuff isn’t rolling around. I’ll just have to live with the crooked ceiling. What can you do?
Come back next week to see the wallpaper go up! That’s when things will really start coming together!
Until then, happy DIY-ing!
