Chunky Wood Shelves
Alright! This is a quick and easy project to give you some chunky shelves in any type of space (big or small). The best part about it is that you can get the exact size and color that you want without paying a small fortune to get it. Just go out and Google search “chunky shelves” for purchase (that’s probably what you already did which is why you are trying to learn how to make your own); this project is just a few pieces of wood for a fraction of what it would cost to buy, and it looks just as good if not better.
We’ve done chunky shelves in a few places in our house - one set of two shelves we put in our dining room, and the other in our laundry room/mud room above our washer dryer, and I LOVE them.
Open Concept Living Space
This is a picture of what our house looked like as it was still getting finished, but you can see that this is completely “open concept”. This picture is taken in the living room, overseeing the dining and the kitchen. The wall to the right is the wall that needed some love.
Now, we decided to put them in the dining room because this “room” lacked definition. We have an entirely open main living space (kitchen, dining and living room) with a vaulted ceiling, which means we had this big, empty wall that conjoined the living room and dining room and I needed to define each space. In our living room, we did some DIY built-ins (check out our project here) but our dining space needed something extra as well. We purchased a buffet table (ok, it was a TV stand that we put different legs on), and then decided to do some chunky shelves above it to ground the room.
Would you believe me if I told you that all it took were some 2x4s and some pine board? Because literally, that’s all it took.
Step One: Build the Skeleton
First, you want to figure out how long you’d like these shelves, and once you have that, cut a 2x4 board to that length, one for each shelf you hope to build. Then, you want to figure out how deep you’d like these shelves. We decided to do 8” in depth to line up with the 8” width Pine Boards to wrap it. Now, take that depth, subtract the width of the 2x4 board and cut 4 pieces of 2x4 to that length for each shelf. Once you have those for each of your shelves, space them out evening and attach them like prongs to your long 2x4; attach one to each end of the long 2x4 that you cut to the length of your shelves, and then the other two spaced evenly. You can just screw right through on these and they don’t have to be pretty - you won’t see them at all.
Now that you have your skeleton, it’s time to screw these onto the wall. Find your studs, and screw that long 2x4 into the wall into as many places as you can - the more places you are able to screw it into the studs, the less worry you will have when you put things on the shelves. Another thing to note; make sure you have enough room between your shelves so you can reasonably put things on the shelves - it would be a pain to not put the things on the shelves that you’d like to, so measure some things out or place them on the shelves before screwing them in to make sure you’ve got the right spacing for your things.
Step Two: Wrap the Skeleton
Like I mentioned before, we decided to wrap these shelves in pine, but you could really wrap it in any wood you’d like, just know that the price will change if you step up to oak or something more than that. Pine works well and is fairly inexpensive in the grand scheme of things.
There are different grades of pine out there as well - we’ve used a mixture. Some of our shelves we have used the rougher cut standard pine, as the rougher look doesn’t impact the function of the shelves, and we picked the higher quality boards for the front of the shelves. All of it works - just make sure they are straight when picking them out at the store.
We started by wrapping the top and the bottom of the 2x4s. The length was determined by which type of end cap we decided to do. In our dining room, we did an insert on the ends to make the three long boards span the entirety of the shelves and in our laundry room, we did an end cap over the top and bottom board ends and flush with the front board. Personally, I like the end cap look better and it is easier to do, but either way is good. (See below for the two different edges)
If you decide to do the insert on each end, make sure the length of your board includes the entire length of the 2x4s PLUS the width of your board added to each end. If you do the end cap, the length of these two boards is just the same length as your long 2x4 against the wall. For the dining room, we measured by simply adding those pieces to the end to measure instead of adding it all together (pictured).
Now, the front board may need a little bit of cutting for the correct width. To determine this, measure the width of the shelf after you get the top and bottom of the pine wrap on your 2x4s so you can cover both of those edges and strip/cut the board to that width. For the length, if you are doing the insert, the front board is the same exact length as your top and bottom boards. If you are doing an end cap, it is the length of your top and bottom board PLUS the width of your end cap board on each end to cover the edges of the board.
We stained all of these boards after getting the measurements we needed in English Chestnut, since this is the stain used in our home. I also did not choose to do a clear top coat on this to give it more of a real wood look and I prefer it to be more “matte”. These shelves also wouldn’t be getting a lot of wear and tear, so I wasn’t concerned about protecting it.
After they were ready to go, we just got out the nail gun to attach these to the 2x4. Like I said, we did the top and bottom boards first - we nailed it against the whole back of the board to nail to the 2x4, and then we nailed it to each one of the arms of the 2x4 to hold it down. Then we put on the front of the board; again, nailed it to each of the arms in the front, but also to the edges of the other pine piece edges for a solid grip. I will note, these were not perfect lines. Because we were using imperfect pine boards, not everything lined up perfectly square. At first, this was really disappointing to me, but after a while, I actually like the look that makes them imperfect; it feels more organic and honestly is a nice feel to make our house more “homey”. If yours isn’t perfect either, I promise that you’ll learn to love it (or at least, I hope!).
Last, was the insert or the end cap. For the insert, we waited until the other pieces were nailed on before we decided to cut. All we did was measure the opening that was still there and cut a rectangle block that fit in that space and nailed it to the 2x4 on each end. If you are doing the end cap, you can measure the rectangle space that it would take to cover all the edges around each board, and then nailed it on.
Laundry Room
Our Laundry Room/Mud Room also got a total overhaul - stay tuned for a future blog post!
After that, it was time to DECORATE! This is honestly my favorite part of any project like this. We maybe bought two 2x4s and 6 pine boards and in less than a day, were able to completely change the feel of an entire space.
Take a look through your house; is there an empty wall that maybe needs a face lift? Is there a room that needs a focal point? Maybe it’s a bathroom, an entry space, a dining room or living room, but wherever it is, this is an inexpensive way to change a space to something beautiful.
