Our first attempt at a DIY Project: Easy picture ledge/ display shelves

Susie — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 13:50:29 +0000

I can guarantee you this will be an easy DIY project for you because it was the first home DIY project we undertook and our skills are not well honed. It was pretty much as simple as you can get!

We decided to build a picture ledge like this to place over our bed instead of getting a headboard. It was definitely less expensive, and a fun project!

Man, it makes sense procrastination is in the title of this blog because it took us about a total of 4 months to finish this project after buying the supplies, even though it was only about an hour total of work (including hanging).

So, here is what you will need:

a 2×6 plank of wood cut to your desired length
a piece of crown moulding cut to the same length
sandpaper
wood glue
wood stain
paintbrushes
brackets
mounting hardware for the brackets

All together these supplies cost us about $25.

Don’t let cutting the wood scare you if this is your first project- they will measure and cut it for you at the store. We had ours cut to 60 inches wide to match the width of our bed.

After about 3 months of the supplies sitting in my car, we finally got around to the project. (Could we be worse??).

The color of the pine boards before stain

We laid out trash bags on the floor of the garage to protect it from the stain, which ended up being a good thing because of course we spilled it later. We sanded the wood and then wiped it down before staining it. We only needed to do 2 coats of stain on the shelf, moulding, and brackets, and it dried overnight.

And they’re done!

Then, we attached the moulding to the front of the ledge using the wood glue, so that the moulding laid flat against the long 2″ side. This way, the 6″ side can rest on the brackets and has room for picture frames to lean.

Side view shows how moulding is attached to shelf

Next, all you have to do is hang it. Hanging directions will depend on the type of bracket you pick out. Pretty much just hang the brackets at the desired height and width, and then rest your finished picture ledge on them. Pretty simple, right?

The finished product:

We might still add a few accessories or frames to it, but we are pretty happy with how it turned out. A lot simpler than some crown moulding shelf tutorials I’ve seen.

How did your first DIY project go? Let me know in the comments!

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