A wall of floating shelves for $102

One of my favorite things about the new house is my own study.  At last!  It’s also been the most difficult to work on because of the darling little girls that like to “help” by dumping out all of my work & craft supplies and “decorate” everything by drawing on bills and contracts.

This is your first look of my study and you only get to see the one side right now since the other side is not photo ready just yet.  The goal is to create a quiet place for my to work on my day job selling real estate, my other projects like this website, my hobbies that finally have a place other than the back of a closet, and for “mommy’s crafts” to be stored.

Since you’ve never seen this room before, here’s a look at the room in it’s former life as the previous owner’s study.  She used the room that is now Jason’s study for crafts so this was purely a study for her.

More yellow wall & trim paint!  That was step #1 which was taken care of back in May/June when we had the entire house professionally painted.  I would have done the paint myself in just one room (like I did in Chloe’s room and the girls’ bathroom), but since the entire rest of the house including trim, walls, and ceilings needed paint, we opted to go on vacation and let the pros knock it out.  Here’s a look as it looked when we got back.  This is basically what every room in the house looked like and we are nearly finished unpacking again (just a few straggling boxes yet).

The new paint color is crisp & modern, the perfect foundation for our belongings & decorating.  We also changed out the door knobs in the study along with the rest of the house to a bright, polished chrome.  We also changed out the electrical plates because they had been painted the wallpaper and the shiny new white ones look amazing.  You can see in the above photo a new, white plate next to two old, yellow ones.  There is still one left to do in the study because it didn’t fit next to the trim.  We’re working out a solution to that problem.

The curtains & new cabinet hardware are on the to-do list, but first things first, I wanted some beautiful floating wall shelves.  I was inspired by some shelves in a home my family recently built nearby.  I don’t have their budget, but wanted a similar look.  The staggered look is great, but I also liked the floating shelves that I had put in ourlast house in the sitting room off of the study.  In our former sitting room.  In our sitting room, I had used 2 of the largest LACK shelves which just happened to fit with about 3/4″ to spare, which is hardly noticeable and is really the wiggle roomI needed to install them.  After measuring, I found that the wall in the new study happened to be around 3/8″ wider than 3 of the small LACK shelves side-by-side.

I took a trip to IKEA and bought 3 of these LACK shelves in high-gloss white for $16.99 + tax.  Incredible deal for 2 statement-making floating wall shelves.  The trick was getting them lined up for a seamless look.  This took a lot of finesse (I didn’t take a ton of photos).  I used my laser level and yard stick to make the two lines across the wall, then found the studs and double-checked their location by drilling small holes into the wall.  The holes in the IKEA hardware didn’t line up with the studs at all so I used a cobalt drill bit to drill new ones. Thanks for that, IKEA.  Drywall anchors are an enemy of mine since they make promises they can’t deliver.  I wanted to store both books and precious objects on the shelves so they had to be sturdy.

After installing the hardware, then the shelves on the far left, I installed the center pair.  Then I set up to install the pair on the far right.  Although when measuring the wall, they fit with breathing room, in reality, our walls are like normal walls and are not as straight as they appear.  Ours happened to have a hump that wouldn’t let me slide the LACK shelves onto their mounting hardware.  I had to use a circular saw to cut a sliver off of each one and still scratched the heck of out the texture when I used a mallet to force the shelves back against the wall.  It took a few work sessions, but eventually I got it to work.  If I had used staggered shelves like the first inspiration photo, things would have been much easier.

Here’s the wall now, all loaded up with my treasures (you’ll see more of the study soon!):

The seams aren’t glaring, but are noticeable.  It was tough to get these things lined up just so, but the IKEA-quality hardware does allow for some wiggle room — literally.  Some shelves are more sturdy that others, so I put heavier items like books on those shelves and left lighter items, like photo frames, for the shelves with more wiggle room.

I’m so happy that my study has finally gotten some much needed attention.  I’m planning to keep moving around the room tidying and organizing.  It was one of those rooms that was really overwhelming to look at, but taking everything one section at a time always helps me.

Now, back to work!