Tutorials - 4/24 - The Idea Room

How to make café shelves

I hope you all had a great and relaxing Mother’s Day Weekend. We were lucky enough to have my Brother-In-Law and his family stay with us this weekend. Things were a bit crazy considering that there are 11 kids between us ages 14 to 3…!! But we had a great time playing with them. Now it is time to get back to work.

I had a lot of you comment about the café shelves we have in our newly updated Laundry Room. We made them and so can you. The best part is that they are super easy to make. Win Win for sure. So if you would like some in your home keep reading…

How to Make Café Shelves:

1. Find a pair of Shelf Corner Brackets.

I used some from Lowe’s that we found in the molding aisle. We went with the 7 inch size because that is the size that fit the best with the shelf we had chosen. For one shelf you will need 2 brackets. If you are making 2 shelves like we did you will need 4 brackets.

2. Find or make a wall shelf.

We happened to find a nice pre-made shelf at Home Depot. We loved the chunkier style of it and the that it has some nice decorative molding along the edges. It was in the closet and storage aisle.

3. Spray paint your shelves your desired color.

Spray paint was the easiest and fastest option. Plus—I LOVE spray paint. It makes me super happy.

4. Glue your corner brackets on the BOTTOM of your shelf.

Make sure that the back of the bracket is lined up perfectly with the back of your shelf. So that when the shelf is on the wall, there will be no gap between the wall and the bracket. You want them to look like they are holding up the shelf.

We used Gorilla Wood Glue.

5. Be sure to adjust the bracket and place it in from the edge of the shelf.

We measured ours so that it was set in 4 inches from the side end on both ends of the shelf.

6. Let Wood Glue dry completely.

We decided to make our shelves the same size but had debated about making the top shelf a bit smaller than the other one. Ultimately we decided to go with two of the same size shelves. I am really happy with how they turned out and feel like the brackets give the shelf a lot of fun character and interest.

Have any of you made any café shelves or something similar for your home? I would love to see them. I would also love to see if any of you end up making some of these. I always love hearing from you guys out there!

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May 14, 2012 · Filed under: DIY Tutorials, Home Decor, Home Remodeling, Organization Tips, Tutorials Tagged with cafe shelf, cafe shelves, DIY cafe shelves, how to make cafe shelves, kitchen shelves, Laundry room decor, Laundry room ideas, make a shelf, make shelf

Flower pot bird house

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This month as part of the Lowe’s Creative Challenge of which I am a team member of, we were challenged to make a DIY Bird Retreat. I personally did not want a “normal” birdhouse and needed something a bit more practical and realistic for my own personal preferences. So I decide to make a Flower Planter Bird House…sort of a two in one combo.

I had a few different designs floating around in my head and headed to Lowe’s to see just what I could actually turn into a reality. I knew I wanted a WHITE planter but was looking for just the right style.

I picked up this almond colored flower plantar, some plastic moldings, potting soil, white silicon, bird seed and some flowers.

We used some scrap wood from previous projects at home to build the square base which became our birdhouse. Then we added some moldings at the top and bottom to give it a little bit of a customized look. We drilled a hole for the birds and added a little tray to hold some bird seed for our feathered friends to enjoy.

We painted the birdhouse box with some exterior paint and spray painted the plantar box white to match. I am really pleased with how it turned out and love having a nice pop of color out on the back porch. I think I may make a matching set so that they can be on either side of the stairs that you can see to the left of the photo.

Be sure to stop back by if you would like to see how we made this. I will be sharing the full tutorial later.

Thanks to Lowe’s for helping us get motivated to get this project done! You can find Lowe’s Creative Ideas on FB for more great ideas. They also have a Lowe’s Creative Ideas blog…and you might recognize one or more faces there now… Smile

And…just in case you missed last month’s Lowes Challenge…you can find it here.

Disclosure: Lowe’s provided me with a gift card to showcase this project this month as part of their Lowe’s Creative ideas Bloggers team.

March 26, 2012 · Filed under: DIY Tutorials, Home Decor, Home Remodeling, Outdoors, Sponsors, Tutorials Tagged with bird house, DIY birdhouse, flower pot bird house, Lowes creative blogger, lowes creative challenge, unique bird houses

Towel rack tutorial

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As promised we are sharing how we made our customized Towel Rack as part of our Lowe’s Creative Ideas Blogger challenge last month. The tutorial is fairly involved but hopefully if you are interested in making one for yourself you can follow along fairly easily.

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We began our cabinet design with basic sketch of what we wanted it to look like. We then measured the space of where the cabinet was to go and also measured the cabinet door (we had previously bought. From that information, we figured out the dimensions of the cabinet.

For instance, the door was 20 inches tall and 24 inches wide and we wanted 3 inches of face frame around the door (and also needed to allow for a 1/8 inch space/gap between the door and the frame). So…the bottom portion of the cabinet ended up being 26 1/4 inches tall, 30 1/4 inches wide, and 8 inches deep.

Materials Needed:

1 5/8 inch furniture grade piece of plywood (4×8 feet)
2 eight foot pieces of 3.5 inch x 3/4 inch MDF boards
1 four foot length of crown molding
30 feet of door jamb molding
2 hooks for towels
2 zinc narrow hinges
2 friction lid supports
1 cabinet door pull
4 finial feet
gorilla wood glue
wood filler
sanding block
painter’s caulk
primer
paint

pre-made cabinet door (ours was 20 x 24 inches) OR make your own with a piece of wood and some decorative trim

We started with a 5/8 inch furniture grade piece of plywood (4×8 feet). The first cut was for the back (29 inches wide by 60 inches tall). So when you attached the 5/8 side panels, the total width was needed 30 ¼ inches. I then cut the other parts of the bottom cabinet (leaving the upper portion for later once I could see what remained to be cut).

I added an extra layer of plywood on the interior of the cabinet (sides and bottom) to make it sturdier and to allow for the attaching of hinges (you will notice that on the extra piece on the sides is slightly shorter than the piece we attached it to because we only had that length of wood piece remaining from 4×8 foot sheet we originally started with…and the gap would not be seen at the top of that section).

Top of Cabinet – I cut 3/8” wider than the width and depth to allow for the 3/8” molding (which will be attached later to frame the cabinet) to be flush on the sides and front.

Attach the face frame to the front of the cabinet.

Cut outside edge of molding at a 45 degree angle so that the edges will be flush with the sides.

We used 3 ½ inch wide MDF boards to construct the sides and top of the upper section.

We added a second piece of MDF on the top to allow for a better place to attach the moldings. Cut molding to size once the sides and top had been glued and nailed (most of the moldings covered the nail holes).

Determined where to put the towel hooks, and then put a cross piece of MDF to allow for more wood to screw the hooks into.

We attached the second strip of wood behind the face frame so that it would drop down and provide a place for the cabinet door to rest and close on (see second picture below). We just used a left over piece of wood and extended it down an inch. We attached the wood with gorilla wood glue and used some clamps to hold it in place while it dried.

Then measured and cut decorative moldings to size (attached these molding with only wood glue since the back was only 5/8 inches thick and nails would have protruded through the back of the cabinet. All other molding were attached with glue and nails).

Then we attached some decorative trim moldings to cover up the plywood edges and to give the cabinet a nice finished look. These were glued on as well.

We then attached the hinges and friction support. You can see that were the friction support attaches to the interior of the cabinet, we had to add a 1 1/2 inch thick piece of wood (with wood glue and clamps) to the back of the face frame.

To attach the finial feet, we drilled pilot holes into the four corners of the bottom of the cabinet. The holes were slightly smaller than the finial feet screw but allowed for a secure fit once we screwed in the feet. One suggestion, to allow for starting the screw into the smaller holes, we rotated the drill in a circular pattern as we pulled the drill bit back out of the finished pilot hole. This created a little bigger opening at the start of the pilot hole and allowed for an easier screwing-in process.