Easy Front-Facing Picture Book Display Shelves

If you're one of my regular readers, then you I know I've been teasing you for over a week nearly a month with promises of seeing our new book shelves.  It's silly for me to be so happy about them, but I LOVE them!!  They make me smile each time I see them. 

I told Hubby that for my birthday present I wanted a garage date to build these shelves.  (And I promise a step-by-step is coming at the end of this post...I just can't help show you the finished pictures first.)

And before I go further...this is the first thing that Hubby and I have ever really built ourselves from scratch out of wood...so if we can do it, you can too.  We're no woodworking experts.

I'd been looking at a few options for kid-friendly bookshelves, and chose these because I love the way they look.  What I've ended up loving most about them though, is that my pre-schooler and toddler can pick and put away their own books!!  They can't reach the higher shelves, but that's turned out to be a nice way to rotate books, and they can always ask for help getting an out of reach book.

We did start with inspiration from Fawn at Frugal Home Designs and these from Texas Monkey.  They're all variations of the same shelves, although the size wood each of us used is a little different as is the placing of the screws.

I'm already thinking of a few more places where we could use them.

We put four of them in Little Brother's room since he had the wall space.  We set the lowest shelf aside for him...notice a theme in the kinds of books he likes?

And each of the girls got one by their beds.

Remember the kindergarten sign from here?  We finally got it hung up last weekend.

Notice anything about Firecracker's favorites?

Firecracker also likes to use hers as a place to put a sippy of water or tissues she might need during the night.

A shelf by her bed, provides Sweet Pea a much larger supply of books to stack...

...and fill her crib with.

But what I love most about these shelves is when she's done, she can put them away by herself.

And she loves it.

 The sweet print of Christ's hands and the little girl can be found here.

We made the shelves deep enough that they can hold several layers of books.  Since they're this deep, they can hold almost as many books as a similar sized traditional bookshelf...but without the worries of them falling off.

And as you can see not all  of the books on our shelves belong to us...some are library books.

And of course these shelves can now serve as backdrops for any number of funny pint-sized portraits...especially if your kids are wearing shirts with books on them.  (For stencils for the girls shirts click here.  For Little Brother's shirt stencil click here.)

So here's what you're all waiting for...the instructions.

Tutorial:

Here are the supplies you'll need to make your own display shelves like ours.  We made (4) 3-foot shelves and (2) 2-foot shelves.

• (2) 1''x2''x8 foot board
• (2) 1''x4''x8 foot board
• (2) 1''x6''x8 foot board
• wood glue
• screws or nails--We used 1 1/4 inch screws (about 50) for assembling the shelves and 2 1/2 inch screws (about 15) for mounting the shelves to the wall through the studs)
• Sand paper and/or electric sander
• Paint or stain
• Wood filler/calk optional (We didn't use it, but to make them look more professional, you may want to.)

I started by having the guy at Home Depot cut the boards for me.  Each board was cut into (2) 3 foot lengths and (1) 2 foot length.

Each shelf will need a set that looks like this.

They will go together to look like this.

We started out by sanding the pieces with our little electric sander.  Sand paper would look fine too, it will just take a little longer.  I just sanded the edges that were going to be exposed.

As we constructed the shelves, we put down a layer of wood glue, and then the wood on top of it. 

The way we did it, the front piece goes ON TOP of the bottom piece.

We were able to use clamps for the front piece, but for the others we just had to hold it in place ourselves while Hubby drilled holes for the screws and then put the screws in place.  You'll want to wipe off any excess glue as soon as you've got the screws in.  We did the lip on the front of the shelves first.

We didn't measure exactly where we were putting the screws because they don't show, but they were about an inch from each end and then a little less then 12 inches apart going down the shelf. 

Then we repeated the process for adding the back of the shelves.  We put the back piece BEHIND the bottom piece.

We had to hold the back pieces ourselves because we didn't have large enough clamps.

Once the screws were in, we took the clamps off and let the glue dry overnight. 

One additional step that we skipped was to put wood filler in any defects in your wood and/or to cover the screws.  You would need to do this and let it dry thoroughly before doing a final sanding.  We didn't fell the wood filler was necessary because the way we constructed the shelves, the screws were on the bottom and the back and not noticable.

The next morning we sanded the shelves down thoroughly to even out places where the seams hadn't been lined up perfectly.  (Hubby says he heard that the difference between a master woodworker and other woodworkers is that they know how to hide their mistakes...we're not masters yet, but we did a passable job.)

Then we applied one coat of primer and two coats of semi-gloss paint.  We applied one coat and then had to let it dry for a day...our garage is pretty cold right now.

To mount the shelves to the wall, we used 2 1/2 inch screws and made sure they hit studs. 

For other ideas for display shelves, you can see full wall rain-gutter shelves here.

I really LOVE how the rain gutter shelves worked in this bedroom at the Stories of A to Z, but we weren't going to be able to redo the whole room that way.

If you're looking to do something like these shelves, but don't have time to build them, these are an affordable, although MUCH smaller option from Ikea.

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