Since the load bearing wall removal is finally complete and now we’re just working on the furnishing and room design, I figured I’d do a post summarizing all of the posts and work we’ve done over the past few months. Plus, I like being organized and having things in one place, much to the annoyance of my husband, but who still reaps the benefits of this trait anyway.
We started with this mess of a never used room:
And are now here, to a beautiful, open, family room:
Let’s face it, sometimes houses have weird, little nooks that make you wonder what the builder or contractor was thinking. We have one in our basement. One of the previous owners had the basement finished and created a strange cavity between a support post and a closet. Ever since we first looked at it, we thought “That nook needs some shelves.” Our plan for this section of the basement is to make a bar area, so we thought the shelves would be a good place to store the growlers we’ve been collecting from our favorite breweries.
We also inherited a TV from my Dad. It’s the only other TV we have besides our projector, and its on the smaller side, so we figured the shelves will also be a good place for a TV. A bar needs a TV, right?
Carolyn found some “pinspiration” from these shelves, but couldn’t find a tutorial, so we decided to improvise. She loved how they had a slight rustic, but built-in look to them, without actually cutting into the walls.
First, we measured everything and decided how many shelves to build. We decided to go with four shelves, which would comfortably fit the growlers and the TV on top. We went to Lowe’s and looked at the standard size pine boards and decided that it would be much cheaper to buy a sheet of 3/4″ plywood and cut it into sections for each shelf. I had them cut the shelves to an approximate size because we brought our smaller car that day. I over-sized the cuts by 1/2″ in each direction because although their cuts are super straight, their measurements aren’t always accurate in the store and I could easily do the final trimming at home. If you don’t have a table or circular saw at home, you can have Lowe’s do all the cuts for you, but you’ll want to double-check the measurements before and after cutting.
Our design was a floating shelf so we wanted to see as little support or screws as possible. To hide the screws I used pocket-hole joinery, a technique used in woodworking to join pieces of wood together with a screw drilled in at an angle. The screw can even be covered by a wood plug. This was a perfect practice project for the Kreg Jig Kit that Carolyn bought me for Christmas. The Kreg Jig is a tool to make pocket joinery simple. The kit she got me is amazing and is a bit of overkill for this project, but I plan to do a lot of built-ins with it in the future. Kreg has plenty of jig options
Hi! We're the Hams and this blog is a little bit of home, a little bit of life, and a whole lotta love.
Powered by WordPress & Child Theme by David Hamilton, Parent Theme by Anders Norén