Little Library

I have been so excited about this project.  Sometimes its just random things to make you smile.  This past weekend the Hubby and I put our little brains together and made something for our Little Mans new playroom.  We have books everywhere.  We needed some more book storage and we wanted a good place for books that was easily accessible to little hands.  Isn't that spot perfect.  Its a very useless space in the former guestroom turned playroom.  A little chunk of wall between the door and the closet. 

I found tons of ideas on pinterest.  We don't have an ikea and my dear friend looked when she was close to one... no dice on the cheapo spice racks.  So along the same lines, but different, and then I saw this tutorial on Helping Little Hands.  Perfect.  We followed the tutorial, but improvised a little based on what we wanted and needed. 

We are so pleased with how they turned out, and our Little Man seems to be too...

So the short and sweet of what we did for our shelves.  We read the tutorial above.  We went to Lowes.  We bought the following:

two 1x4x8 boards (for back and bottom)

one 1x2x8 board (for front ledge)

wood glue

1 1/2 inch wood screws (we used 16 to screw boards together)

2 1/2 inch wood screws (we used 8 to put shelves into studs in wall)

white paint and primer in one

Materials we had on hand:

saw

stud finder

sand paper

putty

laser level

I decided I wanted four shelves that were each 18 inches long which worked perfectly to make four shelves our of just the three boards.

The hubby measured and cut the wood.  Then he put all his pieces together.  We decided to secure the back board and the front board to the bottom board so we had the maximum space for books.  (This differs from the tutorial we read). 

 The Hubby then applied wood glue to all pieces and used the 1 1/2 inch wood screws to attach the pieces together.  After doing this to each shelf he puttied over the screw holes and sanded the boards down just a bit so they wouldn't be too rough.  Then they got some paint.  He gave each shelf two good coats and let them dry out in between.  (If you want them very smooth, from what I read researching, sand them down very well before and in between coats)  When they were all dry we got to work figuring out exactly how we wanted them hung.

After laying them out on the floor with a tape measure and some test books (I used the tallest book we had when measuring) I decided I wanted them hung with 12 inch spaces in between (12 inches from top of one shelf to bottom of other). 

The Hubby used his stud finder so we could guarantee each shelf was screwed into studs in two different locations (no anchors needed for us).  We decided to start with the bottom shelf.  We used two 2 1/2 inch screws per shelf.  We didn't want it hung low enough that he could step on it for safety reasons and we had an outlet underneath so we hung the lowest shelf right above that outlet.  The Hubby used a laser level and measuring tape for this process.  After the shelves were hung The Hubby puttied over the screws that went into wall and touched up paint over putty. 

This is the finished product!  We Love Them! 

**I say we a lot in this post.  I had the idea and did some directing (General Lee), but The Hubby did all the manual labor and pretty much all the work.  How blessed are we to have a Husband and Daddy that is a very handy man:)  Thanks babe**