Ooooh, I am SO excited today to turn things over to my amazing husband and DIY partner, Joe, in this first installment of Joe's Corner, in which he will teach you to make DIY floating shelves.  I hope that you will hear from him once or twice a month.  You see, while I am a die hard DIYer and use most power tools, there are some that I have never touched {at least not by myself}.  For example, I do not use our table saw.  It scares the daylights out of me.  I also have limited experience with our circular saw.  So, Joe winds up doing most of the building projects that require the scary power tools and he is better equipped to explain to you how he completes the projects.  Hence, Joe's Corner!

Some of you may recall this project from our twin girls' princess room reveal.  For those of you that are here for the first time or don't remember, our girls' room had this very awkward nook, created by the fact that the chimney runs up through their room.

After brainstorming some ideas, we decided to create floating shelves to fill the nook and now it is absolutely one of the highlights of the room.  You just never know when a room problem can become a highlight of the design!  After deciding what we would do, I turned the project over to Joe :)  His detailed tutorial for these DIY floating shelves is below.  Read on and enjoy!  This post contains some affiliate links.  Click here to read the full disclosure policy.

Materials needed to build DIY Floating Shelves:

• Plywood
• 1×6 pine board
• Stud Finder
• Straight edge
• Level
• Table saw
• Brad Nailer
• Nails
• Stud Finder
• Paint

Hi, I'm Joe.  Welcome to my corner of the blog.  Before we get started, here is a little diagram of the “anatomy” of the floating shelves, which will ensure we are on the same page as you read through the tutorial.

Steps to build DIY Floating Shelves:

1. The first step is to measure the area where the DIY floating shelves will hang.  The nook I was dealing with was 33” x 15”.
2. I had some old 1”x6” pine boards left over from and old bed frame and this is what I used to support the sides and the backs of the shelves.  I used the table saw to rip the boards to a equal width of 1 1/2” each.
3. After these were ripped down to the correct width, I needed to cut them to length with a circular saw.  There were some irregularities in the nook which required me to measure for each shelf separately. Each back support piece was between 32 1/2” and 33 1/4” and each side support was between 13 3/4” and 14 1/4”.  We chose a height of 14” between each shelf which left us plenty of room to put baskets, books and other nicknacks.
4. Because I was dealing with irregular wall measurements, I marked where each shelf would hang on the wall with painters tape and labeled each support piece accordingly.  Since this room was upstairs, I wanted to make sure I had each piece measured and cut correctly so I would not have to keep going up and down the stairs to fine tune each piece.  Measure twice, cut once.  Labeling each piece allowed me to cut the material for all the shelves at one time.  In the end, I did have to fine tune a few pieces but it was still a big time saver to cut them all at once, as opposed to running up and down the stairs with every piece.
5. After finding the studs with a stud finder, I used a brad nailer with 2” brad nails to install each side and back support piece on the wall.  Make sure to use a level here.  These shelves were not going to be holding anything heavy so I knew simply nailing them to the studs would provide enough support, but if your shelves are going to be longer or hold anything heavy you should use screws or a larger nail and make sure to hit the studs.
6. Next, I needed to cut the plywood shelves themselves.  Again, each shelf had different dimensions because of the irregular walls so I carefully measured each one and started cutting.  I used the table saw and the circular saw to cut the plywood.  A side note: our plywood was only 3/8” thick which worked for this area because it was so small and would not hold anything heavy.  For longer shelves, I would definitely use a thicker plywood.
7. I used my nailer again to tac down the plywood shelves to the support pieces using 1” nails.
8. For the front support pieces, I ripped the pine boards to a width of 1 7/8”.   This was an important step because I wanted the side supports and the front edge of the plywood to be hidden.  Recall that the side supports were 1 1/2” thick and the plywood shelves were 3/8” thick.  Added together, those components gave me a total thickness, which meant that my front support pieces needed to be 1 7/8” thick.  If you use thicker plywood just make sure to adjust the math before you cut these pieces.  Also, sand the edges of your front support pieces before you install them to smooth out the saw marks; this will give you a nice finished look.  Be sure to sand them outside so you don’t get more dust in your house then you have too.  After I sanded the front support pieces, I nailed them into place with my brad nailer.

9. After nailing the front support pieces into place I wanted a little more support for my plywood shelves, so I ripped a piece of pine at a 45 degree angle and nailed it to the underside of the shelf, directly behind the front support piece (so it would be completely hidden).  This was an extra step that you may not have to take if you use thicker plywood, but it was worth it for me because I already had the 3/8” plywood in my wood pile.10.  Finally, I covered all the nail holes with spackle, gave everything a light sanding and caulked around the edges.  Once the caulk dried I painted the shelves with 2 coats of paint on to match the walls and called it a day.

Tasha, our girls and I are all pretty happy with the end result.

Let me know if you have any questions.  I hope to see you all back for the next edition of Joe's Corner, which will teach you how to build a treadmill desk (in case someone in your life wants to be able to get some exercise while blogging or doing other computer work).  – Joe

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